Performance Standard for Handheld Emission Monitoring Systems (HEMs) Performance standard for stack emission monitoring, fugitive emissions, and landfill-gas bore-hole emissions (link)
The Environment Agency (EA) established its Monitoring Certification Scheme (MCERTS) to ensure environmental measurements meet its requirements for suitability and quality. MCERTS covers the product certification of monitoring systems, the competency certification of personnel, the accreditation of laboratories and the provision of third-party inspection services.
This document specifies the performance characteristics and test procedures for handheld emission monitoring systems (referred to as HEMs). HEMs are instruments that are used to make measurements in a wide variety of applications when the user needs a high degree of portability. For example, stack emissions monitoring for indicative purposes, monitoring some plants that fall under the Medium Combustion Plant Directive (MCPD), fugitive emissions and gaseous releases from landfill bore-holes. HEMs would typically be simpler and have a higher measurement-uncertainty than continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMs).
HEMs differ from the transportable variants of CEMs, known as transportable CEMs (TCEMs), which are designed to perform to the same high standards as required for CEMs. TCEMs are suitable for quantitative measurements and verifying and calibrating CEMs. TCEMs are typically designed to meet or exceed the uncertainty requirements specified in the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), under the requirements for installations that fall under Chapters III and IV of the IED, i.e. large combustion plants and incinerators respectively. The specifications for CEMs and TCEMs, referred to as transportable systems are included in the MCERTS Performance Standards and Test Procedures for Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems (CEMs) and Transportable CEMs (TCEMs).
Source: EA.