Source Apportionment Of High Reactive Volatile Organic Compounds In a Region With The Massive Hydrocarbon Processing Industries

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

Department of Environmental Engineering, School of Environment, Collage of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

In the Persian Gulf region, conditions are highly favorable for ozone air pollution and the region is a hot spot of photochemical smog. The vast activities in processing oil and gas play a major role in it. It was found that the elevated concentrations of reactive hydrocarbons co-emitted with nitrogen oxides from Hydrocarbon Processing facilities lead to substantial ozone production. South Pars Zone (SPZ) in Iran encompasses the largest gas plants and petrochemical complexes in the world and elevated concentrations of ozone were recorded by air qulity monitoring stations in SPZ. The first step to dealing with ozone air pollution is to quantify Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) emission and identify main emission sources. In this research, a reactivity-based VOCs emission inventory established to provide necessary input data for AQSMs and determine which compounds deserve relatively more attention in control strategy. To do this, first, a fully- speciated VOCs emission inventory was prepared. Then, VOCs were weighted by Maximum Incremental Reactivity scale. Results show that alkenes have the biggest role in mass emission (41%) and ozone creation (78%). Propylene, ethylene, isobutylene and formaldehyde have the most important roles in ozone formation. In addition, the major sources of their emissions are the leakage of equipments in the olefin processes and polymer production plants. The contribution of VOCs in the emission inventory and reactivity-based emission inventory of SPZ is pretty different from inventory composition of typical urban areas and areas with gas production industries but it has similarities with areas with petrochemical industries.

Keywords


Ahmadov, R., McKeen, S., Trainer, M., Banta, R., Brewer, A., Brown, S., Edwards, P.M., De Gouw, J.A., Frost, G.J., Gilman, J. and Helmig, D., (2015). Understanding high wintertime ozone pollution events in an oil-and natural gas-producing region of the western US. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 15(1), pp.411-429.
Allen, D. T. (2017). Combining innovative science and policy to improve air quality in cities with refining and chemicals manufacturing: The case study of Houston, Texas, USA. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 11(3), 293-304.
Ashrafi, k. (unpublished results). Monitoring and control of air pollution in Petrochemical Special Economic zone of Iran, Environment Department of the University of Tehran.
Bell, M. L., Peng, R. D. & Dominici, F. (2006). The exposure-response curve for ozone and risk of mortality and the adequacy of current ozone regulations. Environmental health perspectives, 114, 532.
Brantley, H.L., Thoma, E.D. and Eisele, A.P., (2015). Assessment of volatile organic compound and hazardous air pollutant emissions from oil and natural gas well pads using mobile remote and on-site direct measurements. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 65(9), pp.1072-1082.
Carter, W. P. (2010). Development of a condensed SAPRC-07 chemical mechanism. Atmospheric Environment, 44(40), 5336-5345.
Carter, W. P. (2013). Estimation of ozone reactivities for volatile organic compound speciation profiles in the Speciate 4.2 Database. Center for Environmental Research and Technology, University of California, USA.
Carter, W. P., & Atkinson, R. (1987). An experimental study of incremental hydrocarbon reactivity. Environ Sci Technol, 21(7), 670-679. doi:10.1021/es00161a008
Carter, W. P., & Seinfeld, J. H. (2012). Winter ozone formation and VOC incremental reactivities in the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming. Atmospheric Environment, 50, 255-266.
Carter, W. P. L. (2013). Scales07.
Croes, B. (1991). Technical Support Division. California Air Resources Board, personal communication.
Croes, B. (1994). Southern California Air Quality Study Data Archive. Research Division, California Air Resources Board.
Daum, P. H., Kleinman, L. I., Springston, S. R., Nunnermacker, L., Lee, Y. N., Weinstein‐Lloyd, J.,  Berkowitz, C. M. (2003). A comparative study of O3 formation in the Houston urban and industrial plumes during the 2000 Texas Air Quality Study. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 108(D23).
Edwards, P.M., Brown, S.S., Roberts, J.M., Ahmadov, R., Banta, R.M., Dubé, W.P., Field, R.A., Flynn, J.H., Gilman, J.B., Graus, M. and Helmig, D.,( 2014). High winter ozone pollution from carbonyl photolysis in an oil and gas basin. Nature, 514(7522), p.351.
Emberson, L., Ashmore, M. & Murray, F. (2003). Air pollution impacts on crops and forests: a global assessment, Imperial College Press.
EPA. (2014). SPECIATE Version 4.4. https://www.epa.gov/air-emissions-modeling/speciate-version-45-through-40.
Field, R.A., Soltis, J., McCarthy, M.C., Murphy, S. and Montague, D.C., (2015). Influence of oil and gas field operations on spatial and temporal distributions of atmospheric non-methane hydrocarbons and their effect on ozone formation in winter. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 15(6), pp.3527-3542
Finlayson-Pitts, B. J., & Pitts Jr, J. N. (1999). Chemistry of the upper and lower atmosphere: theory, experiments, and applications: Academic press.
Fountoukis, C., Ayoub, M. A., Ackermann, L., Perez-Astudillo, D., Bachour, D., Gladich, I., & Hoehn, R. D. (2018). Vertical Ozone Concentration Profiles in the Arabian Gulf Region during Summer and Winter: Sensitivity of WRF-Chem to Planetary Boundary Layer Schemes. Aerosol and Air Quality Research, 18, 1183-1197.
Ge, S., Wang, S., Xu, Q. and Ho, T., (2018). Ozone impact minimization through coordinated scheduling of turnaround operations from multiple olefin plants in an ozone nonattainment area. Atmospheric Environment, 176, pp.47-53
Gilman, J.B., Lerner, B.M., Kuster, W.C. and De Gouw, J.A., (2013). Source signature of volatile organic compounds from oil and natural gas operations in northeastern Colorado. Environmental science & technology, 47(3), pp.1297-1305.
Heo, G., Kimura, Y., McDonald-Buller, E., Carter, W. P., Yarwood, G., & Allen, D. T. (2010). Modeling alkene chemistry using condensed mechanisms for conditions relevant to southeast Texas, USA. Atmospheric Environment, 44(40), 5365-5374.
Heo, G., McDonald-Buller, E., Carter, W. P., Yarwood, G., Whitten, G. Z., & Allen, D. T. (2012). Modeling ozone formation from alkene reactions using the Carbon Bond chemical mechanism. Atmospheric Environment, 59, 141-150.
Lelieveld, J., Beirle, S., Hörmann, C., Stenchikov, G., & Wagner, T. (2015). Abrupt recent trend changes in atmospheric nitrogen dioxide over the Middle East. Science advances, 1(7), e1500498.
Lelieveld, J., Hoor, P., Jöckel, P., Pozzer, A., Hadjinicolaou, P., Cammas, J.-P. & Beirle, S. 2009. Severe ozone air pollution in the Persian Gulf region. Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics, 9.
Liang, X., Chen, X., Zhang, J., Shi, T., Sun, X., Fan, L., Ye, D. (2017). Reactivity-based industrial volatile organic compounds emission inventory and its implications for ozone control strategies in China. Atmospheric Environment, 162, 115-126.
Lurmann, F. W., & Main, H. H. (1992). Analysis of the ambient VOC data collected in the Southern California air quality study. Final report. Retrieved from
McDuffie, E.E., Edwards, P.M., Gilman, J.B., Lerner, B.M., Dubé, W.P., Trainer, M., Wolfe, D.E., Angevine, W.M., deGouw, J., Williams, E.J. and Tevlin, A.G., (2016). Influence of oil and gas emissions on summertime ozone in the Colorado Northern Front Range. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 121(14), pp.8712-8729.
Ou, J., Zheng, J., Li, R., Huang, X., Zhong, Z., Zhong, L., & Lin, H. (2015). Speciated OVOC and VOC emission inventories and their implications for reactivity-based ozone control strategy in the Pearl River Delta region, China. Science of the Total Environment, 530, 393-402.
Pan, S., Choi, Y., Jeon, W., Roy, A., Westenbarger, D.A. and Kim, H.C., (2017). Impact of high-resolution sea surface temperature, emission spikes and wind on simulated surface ozone in Houston, Texas during a high ozone episode. Atmospheric Environment, 152, pp.362-376.
Parrish, D., Allen, D., Bates, T., Estes, M., Fehsenfeld, F., Feingold, G., Nielsen‐Gammon, J. (2009). Overview of the second Texas air quality study (TexAQS II) and the Gulf of Mexico atmospheric composition and climate study (GoMACCS). Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 114(D7).
Pires, B., Korkmaz, G., Ensor, K., Higdon, D., Keller, S., Lewis, B. and Schroeder, A., (2018). Estimating individualized exposure impacts from ambient ozone levels: A synthetic information approach. Environmental Modelling & Software, 103, pp.146-157.
RTI International. (2011). Emissions Estimation Protocol for Petroleum Refineries.
Ryerson, T., Trainer, M., Angevine, W., Brock, C., Dissly, R., Fehsenfeld, F., Hübler, G. (2003). Effect of petrochemical industrial emissions of reactive alkenes and NOx on tropospheric ozone formation in
 Houston, Texas. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 108(D8).
Smoydzin, L., Fnais, M. And Lelieveld, J., (2012). Ozone pollution over the Arabian Gulf--role of meteorological conditions. Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics Discussions, 12(2).
Zanis, P., Hadjinicolaou, P., Pozzer, A., Tyrlis, E., Dafka, S., Mihalopoulos, N., & Lelieveld, J. (2014). Summertime free-tropospheric ozone pool over the eastern Mediterranean/Middle East. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 14(1), 115-132.