The assessment of the potential health and environmental impacts of amines and degradation products
related to post-combustion carbon capture activities is a field undergoing continued advancement. Several
detailed emissions evaluation campaigns have already occurred and provided substantial learnings as to
the chemical compounds which will likely be most important from an impacts perspective, and to begin
testing the performance of sampling and analytical methods that are useful for this purpose. However,
several challenges must be addressed in order to make continued rapid progress towards a consistent and
precise range of emissions rates for all chemicals of interest, and thus higher confidence in the results of
environmental and human health studies moving forward. The community workshops described here
were designed to identify and prioritize the most important challenges to these goals, and to brainstorm on
approaches to addressing them.
Many of the critical data gaps identified by the 2011 workshop that are currently hampering impacts
evaluation were not directly related to the health outcomes, knowledge of extent or mode of toxicity, or
exposure information. Instead they related to insufficient knowledge on chemical composition, emission
rates, and chemical fate and transport. This emphasizes the importance of creating cross-disciplinary
amine research efforts that can leverage the knowledge and needs of various research communities. The
2012 working group noted the challenges with executing measurements of the various chemicals of
interest at pilot plant stacks, but also made it clear that substantial improvement could be made in the
performance of emissions measurements if concerted, thoughtful, and community-coordinated efforts
were undertaken in both the laboratory and the field.
EPRI plans for 2013 and beyond include development and execution of the methods testing program
which will be designed with input from the working group and results from the upcoming report. The
goal of the testing is to further inform on the most appropriate sampling and analytical methods for
amines and amine degradation products. Appropriate methods could, for example, be any number of
methods that pass certain performance criteria as determined through the testing. Additionally, EPRI is
sponsoring sessions at upcoming scientific meetings to bring together researchers working on amine
issues from the perspectives of both the CCS community and the atmospheric science community [4].
The goal is to foster cross-disciplinary interaction and jointly learn from the varying approaches most
commonly used in both communities.