Chances and scale of reducing emissions of air pollutions by new environmental protection technologies

Up till now, systematic analysis and periodic recording of air pollutant emissions has only been carried out for S02, NOx, CO, dust and the totality of volatile organic compounds (VOC). The aim of this work was to show, particulary for the other important pollutants, the extent to which emissions could be cut down using the currently available technologies, and to identify those polluant substances and emission sources which presently still have deficits in combating air pollution by technology means. For this purpose estimates were made for the selected pollutants of the emission residues which would remain if the best technology were applied wherever this was technically feasible and reasonable. These residual emission estimates were used as indicators to evaluate the efficiency of technologies developed in the past. In the present survey it was not possible to gather original primary data; an analysis was made of the available literature. An attempt was made, by means of interviews and assessments, to minimize uncertainties and bridge the gap between frequently widely diverging data. The results show that in future the main substances to concentrate on when combating air pollution with new environmental protection technologies are the volatile organic compounds, including CFCs and solvents, the highly toxic trace pollutants such as dioxines, furanes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and those heavy metals which are also emitted in considerable quantity in the form of vapours. The latter category includes mercury and arsenic. The development of new environmental protection technologies should increasingly involve medium sized and small plants, which for various pollutants are responsible for a substantial proportion of total emissions.