The Role of the Process Heater Workgroup in the Industrial Combustion Coordinated Rulemaking Process

The Industrial Combustion Coordinated Rulemaking (ICCR) was established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency to address several rulemaking requirements mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. The ICCR regulatory umbrella includes Section 129 Solid Waste Incineration, Section 112 Maximum Achievable Control Technology for Combustion Sources and Section 111 New Source Performance Standards for Combustion Sources. The Clean Air Act specifies 5 specific categories of combustion sources: process heaters stationary internal combustion engines, boilers, turbines, and incinerators. Workgroups were formed to address the vanous regulatory requirements for each of the 5 combustion sources. These workgroups were called source workgroups. The Process Heater Work group was one of the 5 source workgroups. Two additional workgroups were formed to provide assistance to all the source workgroups in the areas of testing and monitoring as well as economics. Besides the 7 workgroups, the US EPA also formed an oversight committee known as the Coordinating Committee. The Coordinating Committee comprised stakeholders representing the US EPA, affected industries, state and local regulators, and various environmental organizations. The Coordinating Committee members were designated as members of the Federal Advisory Committee responsible for transmitting recommendations to the US EPA. Thus, the source workgroups reviewed existing information, collected additional information, collated and analyzed all the available information on each of the 5 source categories, and made recommendations to the Coordinating Committee for forwarding to the US EPA regarding regulation development.