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CEMENT AMERICAS • Fall 2014 • www.cementamericas.com FEATURE DRIVING INNOVATION 16 C ement producers – especially those operating in the United States and Europe – are subject to a broad range of environmental regulation. In Sep- tember 2015, U.S. cement producers will face a new series of U.S. Environ- mental Protection Agency (EPA) regu- lations, which includes emissions limits and maximum achievable control tech- nology (MACT) requirements, comes into effect. While most of these rules may only apply to U.S. producers, many other na- tions (particularly China) look to the EPA for guidance on their own emissions control programs. It's likely, therefore, that other countries will eventually adopt similar regulation in the future – a trend that's already developing in parts of Latin America. Many cement producers – most notably those that belong to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) – are taking a proactive approach to managing their environmental impact, but there were many others who struggle to balance regulatory compliance with continuing profitability. Despite these struggles, however, many in the industry, including CSI, believe that sustainable cement production is possi- ble. While emissions monitoring practices required to meet EPA cement MACT stan- dards can be challenging, they also pro- vide a wealth of data that can drive greater efficiencies across longstanding processes that would likely change very little without external pressure. Change is always difficult for industry, es- pecially when it's driven by regulatory forces. But disruption often creates op- portunity for new leaders to emerge, and compliance with new standards such as MACT are no exception. Truly innovative companies see beyond the challenges posed by new regulations and look for ways to capitalize on change. INNOVATION AND REGULATION: THE HISTORY The Clean Air Act of 1970 was a watershed for U.S. industry, and cement producers were not immune to the massive and dif- ficult disruption. Five of the six criteria pol- lutants covered by the act – sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM) and lead (Pb) – apply to cement produc- ers. Requirements to measure and miti- gate these pollutants was – and continues to be – a costly burden on industry. In the hopes of alleviating some of this burden, many cement producers actively participated in industry dialogue between regulators, monitoring equipment manu- facturers and other stakeholders as the regulatory process unfolded. Without this dialogue, it's likely that today it would be even costlier and more disruptive to meet the requirement of the act. One example is stack emissions. Monitor- ing was once done by continuously meas- uring the opacity of stack gas, but today the industry relies on continuous emis- sions monitoring systems (CEMS) that use advanced monitoring techniques such as tapered element oscillating microbal- ance (TEOM) or light-scattering technolo- gies. Producers that have replaced opacity-based systems with CEMS have reduced related compliance costs signifi- cantly and increased the accuracy of their reporting data. Data generated for compliance also have value beyond regulatory reporting – some innovative cement producers have used data to identify efficiency gaps and im- prove productivity. A plant in Florida, for example, used data from its mercury monitoring system to redesign its ash handling system and reduce overall mer- cury emissions. Other examples include using instrument data to make combus- tion systems more efficient, an especially important innovation for plants that run a highly variable fuel such as used tires. PARTNERING WITH MONITORING INSTRUMENT PRODUCERS If regulation is to lead to opportunity, pro- ducers must extract greater value from the data that monitoring instruments gen- erate. It's possible, for example, to use data generated for regulatory reporting to diagnose flaws or inefficiencies in produc- tion processes: a producer could conceiv- ably discover a connection between a By Michael Corvese From Regulation to Innovation USING MONITORING DATA TO TRANSFORM RULES INTO OPPORTUNITIES.