Fugitive emissions (FE) represent a crucial challenge for world-wide manufacturing in the 21st century. Legislation and regulations governing greenhouse emissions across the globe are becoming ever-more stringent, the costs of operation are constantly increasing and manufacturing demand continues to increase.
A large contributor to global emissions are the fugitive emissions of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) from industrial valves. The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA has determined that a typical refinery or chemical plant has, on average, 7,400 valves and that they are responsible for 62% of all the uncontrolled emissions from the facility.
This equates to an average of 408 tons of VOC emissions annually per facility. A small portion of these emissions can be sourced to the valve’s joints, flanges and connections, but the vast majority
(~80%) originate from the dynamic sealing on the valve’s stem.
It is therefore clear that effective detection and control of fugitive emissions from valves would have a major impact on the amount of VOC emissions released to atmosphere.
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