Tennessee Division of Air Pollution Control (DAPC) Facilities Permits Inspections Complaints eDocuments Parent Site NameSite LocationCountyEFOLatitudeLongitude Heraeus Precious Metals North America LLC1975 Knoxville HighwayMorganKnoxville36.095519-84.548704 COMPLAINT Help Back to Previous Page Complaint Number108904DivisionAPCDate ReceivedMAY-14-2021How ReceivedPhoneConcerningStack OpacityConcerning (Other)Assigned DateMAY-14-2021Site ID12394Facility ID65-0049 Location based on SITE_ID Site ID 12394 Site Heraeus Precious Metals North America LLC Location 1975 Knoxville Highway City Wartburg Description Precious metals processing County Morgan EFO Name Knoxville Site Owner Heraeus Precious Metals North America, LLC Investigation Results Date InvestigatedMAY-18-2021StatusNo Violation FoundStatus DetailResponsible PartyDate CompletedJUN-23-2021Referred ToDate ReferredLast updatedJUN-23-2021 Complaint Description and Writeup ACME Mapper Complaint Description and WriteupComplaint: Complainant said they have recently noticed smoke coming from the big steam plume.On May 18th, 2021, JEL investigated this complaint. Upon arriving at the facility, JEL did notice some particulate intermittently being left behind after the steam plume dissipated at an opacity of approximately 15-20 %. While on-site JEL reviewed records from the previous week, when the complaint was voiced, and for the current week as well. The records review did not any parameters out normal operating range and the facility had not had any malfunctions. JEL checked the parametric values while on-site while the stack had particulate coming from it and found that all regulations and permit guidelines were being met. JEL suggested that maybe there was material left over in the stack that could be causing the stack and asked if the facility had completed or had plans to clean the stack. The facility explained that the stack should be in a pretty clean state as they had done a full stack cleaning at the end of April 2021. With all parameters of the permit being met and and the stack having recently been cleaned, it was determined that the material being processed was most likely the cause of the particulate that was left over. The facility did say that they had a new batch of material that had Iodine in it that might be causing the issue. They had never really processed that type of material previously, and were in the process of dialing in the best fan rates to get the burn off. The facility did say they were going to cut the fan rate back to see if maybe the product just wasn't getting enough time in the afterburner chamber to completely burn off. They also stated that they only had a small amount of the material left to process and were hoping that once it was done the normal parameters would then take care of anything else they would need to process. A follow up visit was completed on 6-14-21, and no visibles were seen from the stacks.
     Tennessee Division of Air Pollution Control (DAPC)