History

Ernest Vrins studied at the department of geophysics of the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and graduated in 1979 with specialization Meteorology.
After that, he worked at the University of Wageningen, department of air pollution, and was involved in testing and developing fugitive dust samplers. These studies were funded by the Dutch government in order to investigate the effects of increasing the use of coal for energy production on the environment.

In 1988 he started Buro Blauw, a research and consulting company on air pollution. Until 1996 he continued fugitive dust research by further development of fugitive dust samplers and performance of fugitive dust measuring campaigns near handling and storage sites of dry bulk goods, land fills, cement industry and so on.

In 1996 and 1997 he worked at the University of Delft, department of chemical technology, section particle technology, to develop methods to estimate the fugitive dust emission of fugitive dust sources and to control these emissions by simple methods as visual observation of dust clouds. This study was funded by the Dutch government and the dry bulk good handling companies of the port of Rotterdam.

At the moment, he works as an independent consultant on fugitive dust problems. Main fields of interest are the development of a real-time coarse dust monitor, simple methods for direct control of fugitive dust emissions and studies to the impact of fugitive dust sources on the environment, for instance dust nuisance.