Characterization of Cotton Gin Particulate Matter Emissions – Final Year of Fieldwork

Due to EPA’s implementation of more stringent standards for particulate matter (PM) with an effective diameter less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5), the cotton ginners’ associations across the cotton belt agreed that there is an urgent need to collect gin emission data. The primary issues surrounding PM regulations for cotton ginning industry are the limited or lack of available PM2.5 data, that current dispersion models can potentially over-predict property-line PM concentrations at cotton gins, and that federal reference method PM samplers may over-predict emissions or concentrations when sampling in agricultural environments. In response to the gin associations’ requests, a cotton gin PM emissions sampling project was planned and begun in 2008. During 2011, the third year of the sampling campaign, a gin was extensively sampled in North Carolina and extensive lab analyses were conducted on more than 3000 samples. This paper highlights the individual sampling campaign and summarizes the information collected at the seven gins sampled.