Volatile Organic Compounds

The Industrial Emission Directive (IED) - Driving closed systems in surface cleaning

The European Council Directive 1999/13/EC (known as SED Solvent Emissions Directive), which Member States needed to transpose into national legislation put into force not later than 1 April 2001, became fully active for all new as well as existing installations on 31 October 2007. The SED was implemented in 2010 into the Industrial Emission Directive 2010/75/EU (IED).

It covers a wide range of solvent-using activities, such as printing, surface cleaning, painting and coating activities, dry cleaning and manufacture of footwear, and pharmaceutical products.

The IED establishes emission limit values for VOCs in waste gases and maximum levels for fugitive emissions for solvent. Although chlorinated solvents have negligible ground ozone formation potentials, they were included into the IED directive because of their overall hazard profile.

For Surface Cleaning the directive is driving the use of enclosed equipment by setting tight emission limits, not only reducing emissions into the environment but also reducing to a high extent the risk for worker exposure. Proper implementation is seen by ECSA as a basic element for gaining and increasing  sustainability of the chlorinated solvents.

ECSA is helping users through guidance to properly implement the directive and ECSA member companies are offering the tools to establish closed systems not only during cleaning but also for handling and storage and run the closed equipment with chlorinated solvents in a highly economic manner enabling equipment integrated recycling and constant re-use of the solvents.

To extent the benefit of closed systems and to assure adequate risk control of R45 labelled solvents in surface cleaning also in units below 1mt/year solvent consumption which are exempted from the IED directive, ECSA has developed the trichloroethylene charter (TRI Charter) as an voluntary industry commitment.
See the TRI Charter page.

Documents

Download the IED-Directive  document (pdf).
Download the ECSA Guidance on the Industrial Emission Directive for Chlorinated Solvent Users  document (pdf).