ABSTRACT
Since 1983, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has been developing and adopting, for regulatory purposes, nonvehicular source test methods for toxic air contaminants. This chapter presents a brief overview of the CARB toxic air contaminant source test methods and the results of toxic air emissions tests conducted on three natural gas-fired utility boilers. Quality assurance procedures were used by the CARB staff to ensure the reliability of the results. These procedures included checking the sampling bags for contamination prior to sampling and collecting blank and spike bag samples in the field. In conclusion, it can be reported that volatile organics exist in natural gas going into the tested utility boilers. It can also be reported that emissions of these volatile organics from utility boilers is low, even though the stack-sample results are clouded by low concentrations of Volatile Organics high toluene contamination, a lack of benzene confirmation by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, and low recoveries for the spike samples.
