BOARD MEETING DATE: April 4, 2003
AGENDA NO. 4

Execute Contract to Conduct Reactivity and Availability Studies for VOC Species used in Architectural Coatings and Mobile Source Emissions

SYNOPSIS: 

As a part of the last amendment to Rule 1113 – Architectural Coatings, the Board adopted a resolution to conduct reactivity and availability assessments of solvents present in architectural coatings to assess the feasibility of a reactivity-based, alternative regulatory approach. In addition, there is a desire to further enhance understanding of interaction between the architectural coatings emissions with other emission sources such as mobile sources in the formation of ozone. Staff proposes to contract with CE-CERT of U.C. Riverside to conduct reactivity experiments of various coating materials in conjunction with mobile and other stationary source VOC emissions. Staff recommends funding this project in an amount not to exceed $200,000.

COMMITTEE: 

Technology, March 28, 2003, Recommended for Approval

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Authorize the Chairman to execute an agreement with CE-CERT for reactivity and availability studies at a total cost of $200,000 ($100,000 funding from the Advanced Technology, Outreach, and Education Fund and $100,000 from the Clean Fuels Fund).

Barry R. Wallerstein, D.Env.
Executive Officer

Background

As a part of the 1999 amendments to Rule 1113 – Architectural Coatings, the Board approved a resolution, directing staff to assess the reactivity and availability of solvents typically used in the formulation of architectural coatings. In addition, staff desires to further enhance the understanding of interactions between various architectural coating materials and other emission sources, such as on-road mobile vehicles, on ozone formation.

AQMD staff initiated efforts in 1999 to conduct research on reactivity-based controls to determine whether it is feasible as an alternative compliance option. Preliminary research had found that different VOC species have varying reactive properties to form ozone under the same NOx environment. However, the research also highlighted the need for additional effort needed to reduce the uncertainty associated with the reactivity values determined using an environmental chamber, especially for the most commonly used solvents in architectural coatings formulations. If feasible, this optional strategy could allow manufacturers to use greater quantities of less reactive solvents, and reduce the quantity of higher reactive solvents.

The environmental chambers used to develop the existing models have a number of limitations, particularly for evaluating effects on PM formation under controlled temperature, humidity, and lighting conditions and for evaluating secondary pollutant formation under lower pollution conditions representing near-attainment scenarios. Because of this, the U.S. EPA provided $3 million funding to the College of Engineering (CE-CERT) located at University of California, Riverside for the design, construction and operation of a state-of-the-art, next-generation environmental chamber facility capable of obtaining the data needed for assessing the use of reactivity data as an ozone control strategy. This chamber was recently completed and is undergoing extensive validation testing to conduct reactivity-related studies.

CARB and U.S. EPA have contracted CE-CERT to conduct three reactivity-related projects to develop the chamber and conduct reactivity evaluations, as well as to improve existing reactivity assessments of some solvent species found in architectural coatings, including Texanol®. However, the current list of solvents for additional testing does not represent all of the solvent species found, and additional projects are needed to reduce the uncertainty of current reactivity data, study the availability and reactivity of low vapor pressure solvents, and assess the correlation between ozone and PM formation.

Proposal

The proposed project will focus on assessing the reactivity of VOC species most commonly found in solvent-based and waterborne architectural coatings and mobile sources, including studying ozone reactivities of low volatility solvents and re-evaluating uncertainties resulting from the current data and modeling. The project will also explore the potential of the new environmental chamber to investigate availability of the low volatility solvents and coordinate the studies with other availability studies sponsored by the Reactivity Research Working Group (RRWG). The chamber will be used to conduct experiments to study specific VOC species in the absence of any other air pollutant, as well as in conjunction with urban air mixtures that include VOCs from area, stationary, and mobile sources. The urban mix will be based on current ambient measurements. The chamber will also be utilized to validate the mechanism for simulating the base case surrogate experiments at lower pollution concentrations that are more representative of ambient conditions. Lastly, this project will evaluate the formation of PM in conjunction with reactivity experiments, including VOC emissions from mobile sources.

Staff is requesting the Board to authorize the Chairman to execute an agreement with CE-CERT to conduct reactivity and availability studies. Funding of $100,000 from the Advanced Technology, Outreach, and Education Fund and $100,000 from the Clean Fuels Fund are available in the FY2002-03 Budget to conduct the study.

Benefits to the AQMD

The proposed project is included in the Advanced Air Pollution Research Plan under the Technical Support for Rule Development/Implementation Section, Item # E-8 – Reactivity-based Approaches. This project will implement a portion of the research plan, meet the technology assessments requirements of Rule 1113 – Architectural Coatings. In addition, the proposed project is included in the Technology Advancement Office 2003 Plan Update, CFS2-1, Technology Assessments of future VOC limits in SCAQMD VOC rules, to further understand the impacts of mobile source emissions and other sources of emissions on ozone and PM formation.

Sole Source Justification

Section VIII.B.2. of the Procurement Policy and Procedure identifies four major provisions under which a sole source award may be justified. This request for a sole source award is made under provision B.2.c.: …services available from only the sole source. Specifically, B.2.c.(1): The unique experience and capabilities of the proposed contractor/team. CE-CERT is the only facility with an advanced environmental chamber capable of conducting reactivity assessments at low pollutant levels, and equipped with PM measurement apparatus. CE-CERT also has extensive experience and expertise in atmospheric chemistry, environmental chamber research, and VOC reactivity research.

Resource Impacts

The total cost for the proposed contract shall not exceed $200,000. Sufficient funds are available from the Advanced Technology, Outreach, and Education Fund and the Clean Fuels Fund.

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