America’s coal-fired power plants emit approximately 48 tons of mercury each year. In March 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR) to permanently cap and reduce these emissions, requiring an overall average reduction of nearly 70 percent by 2018.

Approximately 1,000 coal-fired power plant stacks in the U.S. must be equipped with new mercury continuous emissions monitors (CEMs) before January 1, 2010, when mandatory monitoring goes into effect.  The law states that mercury CEMs must be calibrated to standards established by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), yet the traceability of standards used to calibrate the monitors hasn’t been established.

Under a project funded by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE NETL), Western Research Institute is working with EPRI, EPA, NIST, and instrument vendors to develop national protocols to define NIST-traceable calibration standards for continuous emissions monitoring.

For more information, see http://www.epa.gov/air/mercuryrule/basic.htm.