Fugitive Emissions and Global Warming

Nowadays keeping the air clean is one of the most important aims in environmental protection. The fugitive emissions especially volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) and the ozone-precursors nitrogen oxides (NOX) have a great impact on the quality of the atmospheric air. Worldwide fugitive emissions from leaking valves, pumps and flanges amount to over a million metric tonnes per year. Elimination or reduction of fugitive emissions could save industry many millions of dollars and prolong scarce resources. Sealing system is the major contributing factor will be through the lowering of fugitive emissions. In this study various kind of fibre reinforced Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (NBR) sheet sealing materials and new developed expanded graphite sheets were investigated. Experimental results shown that, the sealing performance has been improved by the development in material technologies. Fibre base materials have higher permeability than expanded graphite for both liquid and gas environments. They have adequate sealing performance to need for all over applications. Expanded graphite shows better sealing performance than fibre base materials but it has lower recovery.As a result, for every specific application, careful selection, correct installation, operation according to the performance envelope, regular inspection and maintenance must be considered for low or zero emission requirements.