Buncefield air quality unit adds advanced instrumentation
27 Jan 2010
Milton Keynes – The Buncefield explosion has led to the award of a contract worth over £1million for Quantitech, which is to provide air sampling and analysis equipment to a new multi-agency air quality cell at the site. The unit was established in line with the recommendations of the Major Incident Investigation Board towards addressing the environmental issues caused by the explosion and fires at the oil storage site near Hemel Hempstead in 2005.
The project was created to develop an air monitoring and modelling capability for major pollution incidents affecting England and Wales. Participants include the Environment Agency, the Health Protection Agency, Public Health Wales, the Met Office, the Health and Safety Laboratory, the Food Standards Agency and Local Authorities.
Quantitech has supplied 18 sets of instrumentation including advanced portable Gasmet FTIR multi-gas analysers in addition to TCR Tecora high volume Echo and low volume Delta air sampling equipment. The company is also to provide a related training programme, covering instrument operation, maintenance, calibration and service.
The Gasmet device chosen for this project was developed for applications in which almost any gas might need to be identified, according to Quantitech’s Dr Andrew Hobson, who explained: “The FTIR analyser is located in a backpack and effectively provides laboratory grade analysis in a field instrument. A Bluetooth connection to a handheld PDA provides simultaneous measurements for up to 25 compounds and the collection of a complete sample spectrum means that over 250 compounds can be analysed,” he explained.
Over the last 6 months we have responded to a number of chemical air pollution incidents with enhanced interim arrangements, according to the Environment Agency’s Gillian Hickey, service manager for monitoring in the Air Quality in Major Incidents project.
“Our experience and the lessons learned at these incidents, which have included fires at tyre recycling sites, a waste management transfer site, an electrical recycling site and a publishing warehouse, are proving invaluable in the development of our monitoring and modelling capability, which will be fully established in April 2010,” said Hickey.
Portable monitoring equipment is used on the project because of the rapid response times required. Emergency Services have to notify the Environment Agency within 30 minutes of a major pollution incident and the Environment Agency will then convene the Air Quality Cell (AQC).
CHEMET air modelling information from the Met Office will be available within 20 minutes with more detailed modelling provided later, while the Environment Agency will mobilise monitoring teams from one or more of eight locations and monitoring data will be provided to the AQC within two to six hours of the incident.
