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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 171 / Wednesday, September 8, 2021 / Proposed Rules this preamble accurately represents the full array of commercial-scale or pilotscale facilities in the United States that are currently operating and claim to use either pyrolysis and gasification units to convert solid and semi-solid materials, such as waste, biomass, plastics, tires, and organic contaminants in soils and oily sludges, to useful products such as fuels and chemical commodities. The EPA also requests comment on whether the information provided in section II.A
of this preamble appropriately captures the universe of pyrolysis and gasification units, and, if not, the Agency requests information on other types of pyrolysis and gasification units or other types of non-combustion units, such as thermal desorption units that process solid waste under pyrolytic conditions to recover oil or other marketable products, that may not be addressed in section II.A of this preamble or may be currently under development or testing phases in the United States.
As more pilot and commercial-scale facilities that use pyrolysis or gasification technologies are built and begin to operate in the United States, there is a growing interest in the general need to determine whether these conversion technologies should be regulated under CAA section 129 as part of a category or subcategory of solid waste incineration unit, or as a specific source category under other provisions of the CAA, including under CAA
sections 111 or 112.19 The Agency is seeking the following information for any pilot or commercial-scale U.S.
facility that claims to use a pyrolysis or gasification technology:
Construction date;
Startup date;
Physical address e.g., state and city;
Brief description of the technology including the primary purpose of the technology e.g., to convert MSW into syngas and how the products thermal energy, tar, char are utilized;
Design type e.g., indirect heated gasifier or pyrolysis chamber in combination with a thermal oxidizer;
Additional process equipment e.g., feed dryer;
Description of process parameters for the pyrolysis or gasifier chamber which are monitored to ensure proper operation such as temperature, residence time in reactor, etc.;
19 CAA section 111 generally relates to standards for source categories that cause or contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare and CAA 112 generally relates to standards for major and area sources of listed hazardous air pollutants.

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Air pollution control devices or other abatement/upgrade systems and description of operating parameters which are monitored to ensure proper operation;
Process flow diagram identifying all emission release points to the atmosphere for the facility with or without air pollution or abatement control;
Air emissions data related to:
Emissions from the pyrolysis or gasification chambers;
Emissions from downstream combustion devices e.g., thermal oxidizer where gases produced by the pyrolysis or gasification unit are combusted; 20
All applicable state and local air regulations specific to the pyrolysis or gasification unit;
Feedstock composition e.g., plastics, tires, MSW;
Facility design capacity e.g., tons of feedstock per day;
Mode of operation e.g., batch or continuous;
Heat recovery, if any e.g., feed dryer;
Operating hours per day and number of operating days per year;
Nature of operation e.g., commercial or research and development;
Plant energy conversion efficiency i.e., percentage of feedstock energy value that is transformed to and contained in the end product;
Recovery of materials for recycling, if applicable;
Beneficial offsets compared to disposal of feedstock or avoided fossilfuel or petrochemical use or emissions for different end product alternatives;
Distance to market for liquid or gaseous fuels;
Market prices for energy products;
and Market prices for recyclable and other byproduct streams.
The EPA reviewed air permits for six of the facilities identified in Table 3 of this preamble. Unfortunately, the air permit review did not result in obtaining the types of information that was requested in this ANPRM.
The EPA is in the process of preparing a detailed questionnaire to obtain the
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information described above as well as additional process and operating information. The EPA intends to distribute this questionnaire in the form of a CAA section 114 request to entities that will likely include a mixture of vendors of pyrolysis and gasification units, owners of demonstration or pilotscale plants, and owners of commercialscale facilities. The first draft of the questionnaire can be found in Docket ID
No. EPAHQOAR20210382. The EPA is soliciting comments on additional information or revisions that need to be incorporated in the questionnaire.
V. Statutory and Executive Order Reviews Under Executive Order 12866, titled Regulatory Planning and Review 58 FR
51735, October 4, 1993, this action is not a significant regulatory action and was therefore not submitted to the Office of Management and Budget OMB for review.
Because this action does not propose or impose any requirements and instead seeks comments and suggestions for the Agency to consider in possibly developing a subsequent proposed rule, the various statutes and Executive Orders that normally apply to rulemaking do not apply in this case.
Applicable statutes and Executive Orders will be addressed once the Agency develops the proposed and final rulemakings.
List of Subjects 40 CFR Part 60
Environmental protection, Administrative practice and procedure, Air pollution control, Hazardous substances, Intergovernmental relations.
40 CFR Part 63
Environmental protection, Administrative practice and procedure, Air pollution control, Hazardous substances, Intergovernmental relations.
Michael S. Regan, Administrator.
FR Doc. 202119390 Filed 9721; 8:45 am
20 According
to a 2019 report issued by the U.S.
Department of Energy, a major challenge associated with gasification of the MSW is the prevalence of nitrogen and sulfur in the syngas that is produced.
The presence of these substances requires cleanup and/or removal if the syngas is to be used in power generation units or catalytic processes to make fuels and co-products. See Waste-to-Energy from Municipal Solid Wastes, dated August 2019 at:
https www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/08/
f66/BETO--Waste-to-Energy-Report-August-2019.pdf.

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