Identification of indicator congeners and evaluation of emission pattern of polychlorinated naphthalenes in industrial stack gas emissions by statistical analyses

- PCN data in 122 stack gas samples from 64 plants were statistically evaluated.
- CN27/30, CN52/60 and CN66/67 were suggested to be the indicator congeners of ∑PCNs.
- Equations describing relationships between indicators and ∑PCNs were established.
- Less chlorinated homologs were dominant in most of industrial stack gas emissions.
- The identification of indicator congeners are useful for predicting ∑PCN emissions.

Identifying marker congeners of unintentionally produced polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs) from industrial thermal sources might be useful for predicting total PCN (∑2-8PCN) emissions by the determination of only indicator congeners. In this study, potential indicator congeners were identified based on the PCN data in 122 stack gas samples from over 60 plants involved in more than ten industrial thermal sources reported in our previous case studies. Linear regression analyses identified that the concentrations of CN27/30, CN52/60, and CN66/67 correlated significantly with ∑2-8PCN (R2 = 0.77, 0.80, and 0.58, respectively; n = 122, p < 0.05), which might be good candidates for indicator congeners. Equations describing relationships between indicators and ∑2-8PCN were established. The linear regression analyses involving 122 samples showed that the relationships between the indicator congeners and ∑2-8PCN were not significantly affected by factors such as industry types, raw materials used, or operating conditions. Hierarchical cluster analysis and similarity calculations for the 122 stack gas samples were adopted to group those samples and evaluating their similarity and difference based on the PCN homolog distributions from different industrial thermal sources. Generally, the fractions of less chlorinated homologs comprised of di-, tri-, and tetra-homologs were much higher than that of more chlorinated homologs for up to 111 stack gas samples contained in group 1 and 2, which indicating the dominance of lower chlorinated homologs in stack gas from industrial thermal sources.