Barstow Air Pollution Control System Improvements

The leading technology for air pollution control from paint lines is thermal oxidation -- essentially the burning of volatile organic compounds emitted during painting operations, converting the compounds into carbon dioxide and water. The technology is very effective, but has some drawbacks. The major disadvantage is that it requires a relatively large quantity of fuel to destroy a relatively small amount of material. Thus the cost of this type of control is very sensitive to energy prices. It is also a significant contributor of carbon dioxide (from the fuel, as well as from the compounds being destroyed), which will become a liability if global warming concerns lead to a future effort to minimize carbon dioxide emissions from all sources.

Under the circumstances, it seems prudent to evaluate alternative technologies for air pollution control. One promising candidate is biological control. While proven highly effective for water pollution control, application of biological control systems to air pollution control is in a much earlier stage of development. An innovative biological air pollution control system has recently become available. An existing coating facility at the Barstow Marine Corps Multi-Commodity Maintenance Center provides a good test bed to evaluate whether the biological system can function well in a military installation. The project will install a pilot scale biological control system in the existing line, and will test its performance under conditions of actual use.

Program Manager: Paul Chalmer, (734) 995-4911, paulc@ncms.org