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Abstract: This study made a field VOCs (volatile organic compounds) measurement for a petroleum refinery in Beijing by determining 56 PAMS VOCs, which are demanded for photochemical assessment in US, and obtained the characteristics of VOCs emitted from the whole refinery and from its inner main devices. During the monitoring period, this refinery brought about an average increase of 61 ppbv in the ambient TVOCs (sum of the PAMS VOCs) at the refinery surrounding area, while the background of TVOCs there was only 10–30 ppbv. In chemical profile, the VOCs emitted from the whole refinery was characteristic by isobutane (8.7%), n-butane (7.9%), isopentane (6.3%), n-pentane (4.9%%), n-hexane (7.6%), C6 branched alkanes (6.0%), propene (12.7%), 1-butene (4.1%), benzene (7.8%), and toluene (5.9%). On the other hand, the measurement for the inner 5 devices, catalytic cracking units (CCU2 and CCU3), catalytic reforming unit (CRU), tank farm (TF), and wastewater treatment(WT), revealed the higher level of VOCs pollutions (about several hundred ppbv of TVOCs), and the individual differences in VOCs chemical profiles. Based on the measured speciated VOCs data at the surrounding downwind area, PMF receptor model was applied to identify the VOCs sources in the refinery. Then, coupling with the VOCs chemical profiles measured at the device areas, we concluded that CCU1/3 contributes to 25.9% of the TVOCs at the surrounding downwind area by volume, followed by CCU2 (24.7%), CRU (18.9%), TF (18.3%) and WT (12.0%), which was accordant with the research of US EPA (2008). Finally, ozone formation potentials of the 5 devices were also calculated by MIR technique, which showed that catalytic cracking units, accounting for about 55.6% to photochemical ozone formation, should be given the consideration of VOCs control firstly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A field measurement campaign for ozone and ozone precursors (VOCs and NOx) was conducted in summer 2011 around a petroleum refinery in the Beijing rural region. Three observation sites were arranged, one at southwest of the refinery as the background, and two at northeast of the refinery as the downwind receptors. Monitoring data revealed the presence of serious surface O 3 pollution with the characteristics of high average daily mean and maximum concentrations (64.0 and 145.4 ppbV in no-rain days, respectively) and multi-peak diurnal variation. For NO x , the average hourly concentrations of NO 2 and NO were in the range of 20.5–46.1 and 1.8–6.4 ppbV, respectively. For VOC measurement, a total of 51 compounds were detected. Normally, TVOCs at the background site was only dozens of ppbC, while TVOCs at the downwind sites reached several hundreds of ppbC. By subtracting the VOC concentrations at background, chemical profiles of VOC emission from the refinery were obtained, mainly including alkanes (60.0% ± 4.3%), alkenes (21.1% ± 5.5%) and aromatics (18.9% ± 3.9%). Moreover, some differences in chemical profiles for the same measurement hours were observed between the downwind sites; the volume ratios of alkanes with low reactivity and those of alkenes with high reactivity respectively showed an increasing trend and a decreasing trend. Finally, based on temporal and spatial variations of VOC mixing ratios, their photochemical degradations and dispersion degradations were estimated to be 0.15–0.27 and 0.42–0.62, respectively, by the photochemical age calculation method, indicating stronger photochemical reactions around the refinery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]