2. Methodology

Page Last modified 20 Apr 2016

8 min read

Menu

CORINAIR 1990 - Summary Report 3 - Large Point Sources

2. Methodology

2.1. General

Legislative requirements (including EEC directive 88/609/EEC, on Large Combustion Plants) and a tendency to more transparent emission data have led to the desire for more information on individual point sources.

CORINAIR 90 provides a lot of information about location, physical characteristics, fuel and abatement technologies for point sources. This data was requested for separate parts and stacks of LPS and for the LPS as a whole (see appendix C for a full list of all LPS related data in the CORINAIR 90 database).

However, not all countries were in a position to supply all requested data. Furthermore, inconsistencies between countries and confidentiality restrictions limits the usefulness of some CORINAIR 90 LPS data.

2.2. Definition

The criteria for consideration of a source as a LPS (see table 3) was a minimum requirement for CORINAIR 90. Countries are obliged to include all point sources fulfilling the criteria but were free to include more sources as LPS if data were available.

Table 3: Criteria for Large Point Sources in CORINAIR 90

Source	Criteria
Power Plants	Thermal capacity > 300MW
Refineries	All plants
Sulphuric Acid Production	All plants
Nitric Acid Production	All plants
Iron and Steel Plants	> 3x10⁶ tonnes per year
Production of Paper Pulp	> 10⁶ tonnes per year
Vehicle Painting Units	> 10⁶ vehicles per year
Airports	> 10⁶ LTO cycles per year
Any Activity	> 10³ tonnes of SO₂, NO_x or NMVOC or > 3x10⁶ tonnes CO₂ per year

The criteria mentioned in table 3 have been extended by most countries. This has been done e.g. to follow the EEC directive 88/609/EEC which considers Large Combustion Installations" with a nominal thermal capacity of more than 50MW. The inclusion of these point sources avoided the duplication of efforts.

One of the improvements of CORINAIR 94 includes extended LPS criteria (see Recommendations for Revised Data System for Air Emission Inventories, EEA 1995).

2.3. Confidentiality

The very detailed information on large point sources is often restricted by confidentiality concerns on the part of the authority submitting information to CORINAIR 90.

Specifications given in table 4 could be labelled as confidential by the counties. Some countries made use of this possibility and restricted this data as confidential and to be used only for completeness and transparency but unavailable for the general public.

Table 4: Specification possibilities for confidential data in CORINAIR 90

Related installation	Confidential data
Stack	Height and surface Exhaust gas parameters
Part	Description of process and thermal equipment Working time per year
Control device	Name of control device control efficiency

In addition to these database inherited confidentiality restrictions some countries specified restrictions on information of a more general nature.

Austria: source data, operations, activity data, emission data for individual large point sources (LPS)
Czech Republic: location (co-ordinates), source data, activity data of all LPS
France: source data, operations, activity data for all LPS
Greece: source data, operations, activity data, emissions of refineries
Hungary: source data for all LPS
Italy: activity data for all LPS
Netherlands: source data, operations, activity data for all LPS
Norway: source data, operations, activity data for sources of SNAP groups 3 and 4 (industrial combustion and production processes)
Poland: location, source data, operations, activity data for all LPS
Portugal: location, source data, operations, activity data for all LPS
Slovakia: source data, operations, activity data for all LPS
Spain: loactions, operations, activity data for all LPS
Sweden: LPS data are all accessible but there are restrictions on area source activities / emission factors
Lithuania, Romania, Belgium Wallonie, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom did not place any restrictions on the data submitted.

The use of data specified as confidential is restricted. It is not permitted for the EEA or the ETC/AEM to publish such data or to make it available to third parties. It is only possible to use these data for quality control checks and to present these data as part of summaries, maps and other presentations which do not compromise their confidentiality.

2.4. Data structure

In the CORINAIR 90 inventory every LPS can have one or more parts and stacks (see figure 2). Each part can belong to different SNAP activities, but the LPS is then assigned to just one activity.

Figure 2: CORINAIR 90 methodology example for one LPS (3 PARTS, 2 STACKS)

The CORINAIR 90 data structure provides site information about location for each LPS, thermal capacity and an indication whether this plant is covered by the LCP directive (see appendix C for a full list).

Information on LPS parts include the SNAP activity, activity rates, annual operational time, fuel consumption, emission, emission rates and the source sector assigned to each part.

Information on stacks includes physical characteristics of the stacks such as height and area of the stack and flow rate and temperature of the exhaust gases.

The countries taking part in the CORINAIR 90 exercise reported a total of 2124 LPS, 5100 PARTS and 4765 STACKS (see table 5).

Table 5 shows that all countries reported data about LPS, LPS-PARTS and LPS-STACKS as part of the CORINAIR90 project and the LPS-data are consistent in so far as the larger countries reported more LPS data compared to smaller countries. The information provided for LPS-PARTS and LPS-STACKS may not be as consistent. E.g. the Netherlands are by far the country with the largest number of LPS-PARTS and LPS-STACKS in Europe according to their inventory whereas no data about LPS-STACKS were reported by Germany.

Table 5: Reported number of installations for LPS, LPS_PARTS and LPS_STACKS

	Country	LPS	LPS PARTS	LPS STACKS
1	Austria	39	66	65
2	Belgium - Flemish region	29	67	62
3	Belgium - Wallonie region	67	139	72
4	Bulgaria	34	64	68
5	Czech Republic	50	130	74
6	Denmark	21	63	30
7	Estonia	14	42	34
8	Finland	62	204	170
9	France	382	689	565
10	Germany (former West)	345	345	NR
11	Germany (former East)	199	199	NR
12	Greece	18	25	37
13	Hungary	47	258	158
14	Ireland	14	26	32
15	Italy	106	415	496
16	Latvia	2	15	4
17	Lithuania	18	56	57
18	Luxembourg	1	2	2
19	Malta	1	3	2
20	Netherlands	86	789	1551
21	Norway	24	61	32
22	Poland	163	348	554
23	Portugal	29	77	28
24	Romania	57	90	NR
25	Slovakia	45	123	72
26	Slovenia	7	27	25
27	Spain	97	541	359
28	Sweden	76	131	153
29	Switzerland	10	25	9
30	United Kingdom	81	80	54
	Sum	2124	5100	4765

NR ... not reported

2.4.1. Thermal capacity

Most point sources are reported as Public Power Plants ,the ones with a capacity over 300MW representing by far the highest thermal capacity (see table 6). The thermal capacities of Refineries and Industrial Chemical Industries have not been given by many countries and are therefore not included in this table.

Table 6: Reported number of installations and thermal capacity of LPS

Source sector	Number of LPS	Number of LPS parts	Thermal capacity in MW
Public Power Plants >300MW	478	855	681 398
Industrial Combustion Plants >300MW	212	355	159 314
Refineries	219	567	-
Industrial Chemical Industries	184	439	-
Other	1 031	2 884	144 808
Sum	2 124	5 100	985 520

As mentioned before, many countries did report also for plants with a thermal capacity between 50 and 300MW. The corresponding figures are shown in table 7. (The LPS have been included under other" in table 6)

Table 7: Reported number of installations and thermal capacity for small LPS

Source sector	Number of LPS	Number of LPS parts	Thermal capacity in MW
Public Power Plants 50-300MW	104	142	20 468
Industrial Combustion Plants 50-300MW	399	601	70 727

2.4.2 LCP Directive data

The twelve countries of the European Union (1990) reported 932 point sources as being covered by the LCP Directive. It is to be noticed that not all LCPs are defined as LPS in the CORINAIR 90 database. It is estimated that there are approx. 1300 LCP for EU-12.

2.4.3 Fuel consumption

In the CORINAIR 90 inventory every country was free to specify individual fuels, but these fuels had to be allocated to a NAPFUE code as defined in CORINAIR 90 (see appendix D).

Table 8 and figure 3 show the fuel consumption of large point sources for solid, liquid and gaseous fuels. Since some countries did not deliver fuel-related data for their LPS it is not possible to present a summary table for the total European fuel consumption in energy units.

Table 8: Fuel consumption reported for CORINAIR 90

Source sector		Fuel consumption in PJ
Public Power Plants >300MW		6 682
	GASEOUS FUELS	679
	LIQUID FUELS	1 485
	SOLID FUELS	4 518
Industrial Combustion Plants >300MW		1 037
	GASEOUS FUELS	359
	LIQUID FUELS	350
	SOLID FUELS	328
Refineries		978
	GASEOUS FUELS	500
	LIQUID FUELS	440
	SOLID FUELS	38
Other¹		2 995
	GASEOUS FUELS	1 134
	LIQUID FUELS	376
	SOLID FUELS	1 485
Total		11 692
	GASEOUS FUELS	2 672
	LIQUID FUELS	2 651
	SOLID FUELS	6 369

^{1... Inorganic Chemical
Industries are included here

Solid fuels are dominating the picture for the large point source total. The biggest
fraction was reported for Public Power Plants, with progressively smaller
amounts of the total being reported, respectively by Industrial Combustion Plants
and Refineries (see figure 3).Liquid fuel was used by Refineries
to almost 50% share, followed by Industrial Plants and Public Power Plants
with a share of approx. 30%.

Figure 3: Fuel consumption in percentage
reported for CORINAIR 90

2.4.4. Other information about LPS in CORINAIR
90

Many other details covering data like Starting Year, Year Working Time, Abatement
Technology, Fuel Definition and Stack Characteristics have been provided by national
experts (see Appendix C). This data is especially interesting for computer simulation of
emission scenarios and is available on request (within the specified confidentiality
restrictions) for those involved in this area but will not be presented in this report.

2.5 Verification

The CORINAIR 90 data has been examined by the EEA, ETC/AEM and expert panels of the
EMEP Task Force on Emission Inventories to assess its quality, completeness and
consistency.

The studies focused on several aspects, for example:

completeness and consistency (e.g. regarding LPS)

comparison with internationally available statistics

comparison of data on activity rates and emission
factors from independent sources

The results of these studies will be reported back to national experts to help improve
the quality of further inventories.

</head0}