THE SOURCE TESTING ASSOCIATION ANNUAL GUIDE 2012
BS EN 14181 – ISO/IEC 17025 and MCERTS Accreditation for stack emissions monitoring organisations
I
ndustrial process operators that have environmental permits, should be aware of the requirement to ensure that any continuous emis- sions monitoring systems (CEMs) that are installed at emission
points to air are functioning correctly. In 2004 BS EN 14181 was introduced to provide formal quality assurance procedures to be applied to CEMs on all processes falling under the Waste Incineration (WID) and Large Combustion Plant (LCPD) Directives.
The principles of BS EN 14181 are relatively simple in that suitable monitoring equipment is installed; it is set up correctly, calibrated effec- tively and monitored over time to ensure the derived calibration function maintains its validity and suitable checks are made. The outcome of this is to increase both the accuracy and precision of the installed instrument, thus increasing the confidence in the results it reports and ultimately reducing the potential requirement for additional specialist monitoring to verify the performance of the process. Despite this relatively simple overview the processes involved in the
execution of BS EN 14181 are quite complex and vary depending on the installation, the instrumentation and the industrial process operator. Over the past few years, stack emissions monitoring organisations performing EN 14181 work have been doing so outside the scope of ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation, and both industry and the Environment Agency have seen very variable quality in the way this work has been implemented, resulting in some extreme cases whereby a perfectly functional CEM has been condemned as mal-functioning due to basic misunderstandings of both the EN 14181 processes and the installation that was being monitored. The United Kingdom Accreditation
Service (UKAS) is the sole
accreditation body recognised by the UK Government to assess, against internationally recognised standards, organisations that provide certifica- tion, testing, inspection and calibration services. Accreditation by UKAS demonstrates the competence, impartiality and performance capability of organisations or individuals that provide these evaluations.
UKAS
has been working in partnership with the Environment Agency under the MCERTS scheme to define accreditation criteria to ISO/IEC 17025 for stack emissions monitoring organisations that perform and offer a service to verify and calibrate CEMS in accordance with BS EN 14181. The accreditation process is an impartial, rigorous and on-going assessment and focuses on all aspects of the service that the stack emissions monitoring organisation should be performing, to meet the requirements of BS EN 14181. The assessment ensured that they make all parties aware of the requirements of the standard, focusing on the equipment, performance checks, specific monitoring requirements, process characteristics and ultimately deriving a suitable calibration func- tion and on-going verification as appropriate. The actual performance of the functional test of the CEM has not been assessed as it has been agreed that this falls outside of the scope of the accreditation offered at this time, and is covered separately by the performance requirements of MCERTS for CEMs.
14 Source Testing Association Annual Guide 2012
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