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Title: The effect of photochemical dissociation on downwind chlorine dioxide plume concentrations

Conference ·
OSTI ID:351709
;  [1]
  1. Bovar Environmental, Toronto, Ontario (Canada)

The pulp and paper industry handles toxic gases which may present an inherent hazard to the safety of the general public in the surrounding area. One such toxic gas that may pose a hazard is chlorine dioxide. Spills of chlorine dioxide solution result in the gassing off of toxic clouds of chlorine dioxide. Under daytime dry conditions, chlorine dioxide decomposes photolytically to form chlorine and oxygen and intermediates, chlorine trioxide and chlorine hexoxide. Air dispersion modeling of chlorine dioxide releases which does not properly account for its photochemical decomposition will lead to overly conservative hazard zone estimates. Under these conditions, risk control measures and emergency response evacuation zones based on such estimates will be unnecessarily expensive, perhaps prohibitive. This paper investigates the photolytic rate of dissociation of chlorine dioxide under various atmospheric conditions. It was found that modeling based on the decomposition of chlorine dioxide gas, resulted in downwind distances to TLV-Short Term Exposure Limits which are considerably shorter than modeling based on chlorine dioxide dispersion with no decomposition.

OSTI ID:
351709
Report Number(s):
CONF-970677-; TRN: IM9927%%234
Resource Relation:
Conference: 90. annual meeting and exhibition of the Air and Waste Management Association, Toronto (Canada), 8-13 Jun 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of 1997 proceedings of the Air and Waste Management Association`s 90. annual meeting and exhibition; PB: [7000] p.
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English