Volatile Organic Compounds(VOCs) Source Profiles of Industrial Processing and Solvent Use Emissions: A Review

Abstract

Industrial processing and solvent use are two most important industrial sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in China, and the source profile study has attracted increasing attention recently. Studies of VOCs source profiles from industrial processing and solvent use since the year of 2000 were summarized in this study, focusing on the comparison among different studies and the potential impact of different research methods. In general, studies were very limited and focused on few sources. Specifically, only 8 of 32 sub-categories of the industrial processing (according to the source classification method of the National Guidelines for VOCs Inventories Preparation) have been reported, and in terms of the solvent use sources, 4 of 10 sub-categories have been reported. There were large differences among the VOCs patterns of different sub categories emissions of industrial processing or solvent use. In terms of studies of the similar emissions, significant differences of VOCs profiles were resulted from the different research methods, such as the different sampling methods and VOCs analysis techniques. In addition, the non-uniformity of VOC species in the source profile caused difficulty for the comparison of different research results. Oxygen-containing VOCs were important components of the above two types of pollution sources and needed to be included in the measurement. An opening and interactive database of VOCs from industrial processing and solvent use is critically essential in the future, and mechanisms of sharing and inputting relative research results should be formed to encourage researchers to join the database establishment. Correspondingly, detailed quality assurance and quality control procedures are also very important, which include the detailed information such as research objectives, sampling and analysis methods, research region and time, and test times, et al. Based on the community above, a better uncertainty analysis could be carried out for the VOCs emissions profiles, which is critically important to understand the VOCs emission characteristics of the industrial processing and solvent use.