Development of perfluorocarbon (PFC) primary standards for monitoring of emissions from aluminum production.

An EPA Voluntary Aluminum Industrial Partnership (VAIP) program has been formed to help US primary producers focus on reducing the emissions of two perfluorocarbons (PFCs), tetrafluoromethane (CF4) and hexafluoroethane (C2F6), during the production of aluminum. To ensure comparability of measurements over space and time, traceability to national sources was desirable. Hence, the EPA approached the NIST to develop a suite of primary standards to cover a mole fraction (concentration) range of 0.1 to 1400 micromol mol(-1) for CF4 and 0.01 to 150 micromol mol(-1) of C2F6. A total of eight gravimetric PFC gas standards were prepared with relative expanded uncertainties of < or = 0.52% (approximately 95% confidence level). These primary standards were ultimately used to assign values to a series of secondary gas standards at three mole-fraction levels with relative expanded uncertainties ranging from +/- 0.7% to 5.3% (approximately 95% confidence level). This series of secondary standards was used within the aluminum industry to calibrate instruments used to make emission measurements. Assignment of values to the secondary standards was performed by use of gas chromatography with flame-ionization detection (GC-FID) and Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR). Real time pot-line and stack samples from a local aluminum plant were also obtained and sub-samples sent to each participating facility for analysis. The data generated from each facility were sent to NIST for analysis. The maximum difference between the NIST and individual facilities' values for the same sub-sample was +/- 26%.