NPI Industry reporting

Emission Estimation Technique Manual
for
Aggregated Emissions from Printing and Graphic Arts

About this Manual

The aggregated emissions manuals complement the NPI Industry handbooks, and are intended to enable State and Territory Governments to estimate emissions from non-industrial activities (e.g. transportation, domestic and commercial activities) and emissions from industry which are not reported because the relevant thresholds are not exceeded.

This manual provides guidance on estimating aggregated emissions from printing and graphic arts. For this manual the term "printing" includes the five basic processes of the printing (and graphic arts) industry: gravure, offset lithographic, letterpress, flexography and screen-printing.

The predominant emissions from the printing and graphic arts industry are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) contained in the printing inks, fountain solutions and cleaning solutions. VOCs is a general term, which refers to a large and diverse group of chemicals including hydrocarbons, oxygenates and halocarbons.

Emissions from the printing industry can also originate from presses, cleaning operations, ink mixing operations and ink storage tanks. Printing operations may use storage tanks to store inks, solvents, and other organic substances as fuel. Emissions from storage tanks will not be covered in this manual.

Energy sources such as natural gas, oil and electricity are used to operate the dryers used in heatset printing (offset lithography and letterpress), gravure, and flexography. A boiler may be used to generate steam for steam and water based flexography and to regenerate the activated carbon beds used as emission control devices. Combustion emissions may include particulate matter (PM₁₀), sulphur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and VOCs. Emissions from these combustion sources will also not be covered in this manual.

First published in November 1999
National Pollutant Inventory
Environment Australia

Download the Manual

The full document is available for downloading as a PDF file. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer to view the PDF file.

• Download Emission Estimation Technique Manual for Aggregated Emissions from Printing and Graphic Arts (printing_rev.pdf - 61 KB)

If you are unable to access this document, please contact the Department of the Environment and Heritage to organise a suitable alternative format.

Application of the Manual

Each of the aggregated emissions manuals provides details of:

• the NPI substances that are expected to be emitted from the relevant aggregated source type;
• the origins or sources of the emissions, and the processes that may generate them;
• the impacts of any control equipment or procedures on those emissions;
• the broad approaches that may be employed in the estimation and spatial allocation of emissions;
• details of emission factors to be used in the estimation of emissions; and
• a series of illustrative sample calculations for each estimation technique.