Industrial &
Commercial Applications
Many industrial and manufacturing facilities, sewerage treatment plants, landfills, and other commercial operations generate emissions, odors, and other constituents that could migrate beyond the fence line. These facilities may have stack emissions or odor control equipment installed that require permitting and/or monitoring for verification.
AirLogics assists with these situations using our real-time ambient air monitoring equipment, data management platforms, and other capabilities to generate actionable and defensible data.
A special note about cannabis operations, odors and associated terpenes:
Terpenes are a family of odorous aromatic compounds released from the cannabis plant at various parts of its life cycle. AirLogics owns new, state of the art field air quality monitors that are capable of detecting terpenes in real time as a component of Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs). AirLogics routinely measures TVOCs in parts per billion (ppb) or parts per million (ppm).
AirLogics equipment can be set to monitor these terpene odors (via TVOCs) in real time in and around grow facilities or any operation with a need to reduce odors throughout the processes. This data can inform facility managers and/or growers who have the responsibility to operate air scrubbing equipment about potential emissions issues to the surrounding areas – and it can do so in real time based on the measured TVOC readings.
Notifications and alerts can be made directly to managers to allow better management of odors in real time, which can reduce the need to run expensive scrubbing technology when odors are below an actionable threshold, saving from wasteful use of resources.
AirLogics has also been evaluating and analyzing terpene assays with our new field Gas Chromatograph (GC). Data collected by the GC can be useful in certain phases of the cannabis growing cycle and/or facility air quality management as growers may wish to know the terpene content in their plants relative to decisions about plant health. Studies with this GC have shown that variations in red light cycles can result in different terpene contents for genetically identical plants. Much more research on the way!
More about terpenes…
Terpenes are naturally occurring chemicals compounds found in cannabis. There are hundreds of terpenes that all have individual odor profiles associated with each one, with some terpenes having a very strong pungent odor that becomes a nuisance to surrounding communities or neighbors.
Additional industrial applications may include:
Odor complaints
Cannabis air emissions control and odor complaint support
Fumigant monitoring (hydrogen sulfide (H S), 1-Bromopropane (1-BP), otherwise known as n-propyl bromide (n-PB), and sulfuryl fluoride)
Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia monitoring
Ambient air monitoring
Ethylene dioxide monitoring
Data to Support Climate-related Disclosures for ESG
On March 21, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) released proposed rules on climate disclosures for publicly traded companies entitled “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors.” This sets the stage to require more companies to collect hard data on their air emissions.
The SEC’s proposed rule reflects a paradigm shift in the content of financial disclosures relative to Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. The SEC has cautioned filers about using “boilerplate” information and requires filers to provide this information in a meaningful way and went so far as to say that disclosers need to eventually provide “reasonable assurance” of the accuracy of the data provided.
Here at AirLogics, we have over 24-years of experience conducting real-time perimeter air monitoring. We can help you meet current needs for hard data, while anticipating future concerns from investors and regulators.
That opens the door to a range of independent verification measures, from a third-party audit to the collection of hard data. Should corporate governance boards deem this assurance equates to hard data, this could introduce verification sampling and monitoring in ways that was not required to obtain certain regulatory permits or other approvals for operator to emit harmful GHS or other hazardous air pollutants (HAP).
Currently, to discharge pollutants to the air, most states require the discharger to apply for a permit. That permit is usually informed by limited testing from the source (i.e. stack testing) followed by computer modeling of where those emissions will travel and how they might be dispersed in the environment. Further verification sampling beyond infrequent stack testing is rarely required. On rare occasions, more robust “fence line” perimeter air monitoring conducted to verify the local impacts that the discharger might have on the local or regional community.
The SEC proposal does not necessarily recognize the current regulatory requirements and framework that allow for emissions and has the potential to go beyond it and induce emitters and filers of SEC disclosures to collect hard data that measures and assess their GHG emissions and efforts to reduce those emissions. The adage that “you can’t improve something until you can measure it” seems to apply here. If the SEC is requiring “reasonable assurance” of the accuracy of GHG disclosures, and investors are interested in real and meaningful efforts to reduce GHG, collecting data may be what is required. This dovetails into substantive Environmental Social Governance (EGS) issues.