The 3rd and 4th tranches of the Chemicals industry - those where the main activities are in the Inorganics sector - will be required to submit applications for PPC Permits in the periods October - December 2004 and June - August 2005. Note S4.03 aims to provide guidance on techniques, including Best Available Techniques, and standards of operation which are relevant to the Inorganic Chemicals industry, which will help Operators in the preparation of their PPC Permit applications and help Agency staff to assess those applications and to set appropriate Permit conditions.

Ideally, IPPC guidance and indicative standards should be based on the relevant BAT Reference document (BREF), produced by the European Commission. Unfortunately, the BREF production programme has fallen behind the UK's IPPC implementation programme.

In the absence of comprehensive BREF coverage, this sector Guidance Note has been structured around the two existing IPC Technical Guidance Notes - Acids & Halogens (S2 4.03) and Inorganic chemicals (S2 4.04) - with cross-referencing to sectoral and cross-functional BREFs, where available, and adoption of their indicative BATs where appropriate. To that extent, this Note is an interim Guidance Note and will have to be reviewed in 12 - 18 months time when the remaining BREFs have been published.

The Note is produced in the standard Agency format for sectoral PPC guidance which, in addition to the sector-specific sections populated by information from the IPC Notes and BREFs as noted above, includes standard sections on general PPC issues, energy, noise, accidents, site closure, waste issues, material efficiency, etc, which are common to all sectoral guidance notes.

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