۱٫ Introduction

۲٫ Method and data

۳٫ Results and discussion

۴٫ Conclusions

Acknowledge

Appendix A. Supplementary data

References

Abstract

The petroleum refining industry is an important contributor to industrial volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emission. As a foundational work for VOCs control, previous VOCs inventories usually treated the petroleum refining industry as an integrated part resulting the unknown of VOCs emission characteristic among different units. Refined management has becoming an inevitability with the increasing strictness of environment standards. This study aims to develop a holistic method for VOCs emission inventory of the petroleum refining industry toward specificity, accuracy and economization, in which a source categorization was proposed from unit angle, and a systematic estimation method was developed from the material flow point of view. This method provides a more specific and accurate quantification method, especially for fugitive emission sources which is a pivotal but difficult problem in VOCs inventory establishment. Through application to a typical medium-scale refinery located in northern China, a unit-specific VOCs emission inventory with 48 emission sources and respective local VOCs emission factors (EFs) was established. Estimation results and economic cost of the developed method were compared with those of other methods. In this study, the integrated EF was 0.77 kg-VOCs/t-crude oil refined, which was in the same order with most previous studies. Inventory results implied that increasing hydrotreating unit, reducing chemical device and solvent-used unit (e.g., polypropylene production, furfural refining unit), upgrading catalytic reforming unit were beneficial to control VOCs emissions in this study. Using floating-roof tanks rather than fixed-roof tanks is an effective way to reduce VOCs emissions from storage tanks, which decrease 72%–۸۶% of diesel storage emissions. Economic cost analysis showed that the advantage of this method lied in lower labor cost, and no subsequent monitoring cost. Suggestions proposed from this study provide feasible measures for local policy makers to control VOCs emission and determine abatement strategies of the petroleum chemical industry. Meanwhile, this study greatly helps enterprises promote the fine management of VOCs-containing materials from the overall processes to identify VOCs control emphasis.

Introduction

Air pollution characterized by high concentration of groundlevel ozone (O3) and fine particulate matter (PM) has caused increasing concerns in China due to its significant adverse impact on human health (Dai et al., 2017; Rohde and Muller, 2015). Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are key precursors for the formation of ozone and PM through complicated photochemical and physical reactions (Shao et al., 2009a, 2009b; Yuan et al., 2013). Ozone reduction is largely accomplished by the control of VOCs (Tang et al., 2012). Chinese government has been focusing on VOCs pollution problem. The 13th five-year plan for ecological and environmental protection made the reduction target that the total national VOCs should decreased by more than 10% during the 13th five year. Standard for fugitive emission of volatile organic compounds (MEEC, 2019b) and comprehensive VOCs treatment scheme for key industries (MEEC, 2019a) were successively published to promote VOCs prevention work, recently. The petroleum refining industry is an important contributor to VOCs emissions, accounting for approximately 3% of the total anthropogenic VOCs emissions (Wei * Corresponding author. et al., 2016). In 2015, the petrochemical industry become one of the first batch of pilot industries to implement VOCs Pollution Pilot Charge Method published in China. Thus, a specific VOCs emission inventory of the petroleum refining industry is necessary and foundational for VOCs emissions reduction and equitable control policies.