With the successful conclusion of the "Ten Measures for the Air", VOCs control has become one of the important directions for air pollution prevention and control in the post "Ten Measures for the Air" era. How to effectively manage VOCs has become a difficult problem in front of people.

VOCs control becomes an important direction in the post "Ten Measures for the Atmosphere" era

With the advancement of atmospheric governance in the past decade, the potential for reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants has become very limited. At the same time, there have been certain achievements in atmospheric governance work: according to the classification of pollutants, the annual average concentrations of the four main pollutants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, PM2.5, and PM10, have basically shown a downward trend year by year.

Chai Fahe, former Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences and a national atmospheric governance expert, stated at the annual media conference held by the Environmental Chamber of Commerce of the All China Federation of Industry and Commerce that after years of governance, the composition of PM2.5 has also changed. The content of sulfate has significantly decreased, but the percentage of nitrate has increased, and the percentage of organic matter has also increased. In other words, this year's pollution control focus is to continue to reduce sulfur dioxide, while also making the control of nitrogen oxides and VOCs an important direction for pollution control in 2018.

The market for desulfurization and denitrification treatment in power plants is relatively saturated, and VOCs will become a new market for air pollution control during the 13th Five Year Plan period, with market space far exceeding the market size of traditional air pollutant treatment. According to the prediction of the China Clean Air Alliance, by 2020, China's industrial VOCs emissions will decrease by 4.3 million tons compared to 2009, resulting in an investment demand of 173.2 billion yuan.

The country has successively issued standards and policies related to VOCs, stimulating the rapid development of the VOCs market. The continuous release of policy dividends and the increasing potential demand in the market provide opportunities for the sustainable development of China's VOCs industry, and promote the rapid development of VOCs governance technology and the growth of professional talent teams.

VOCsGovernance is a difficult problem

As of the end of 2017, China has issued or implemented dozens of VOCs related emission standards, with increasingly stringent policies. The tightening of VOCs governance policies is also a driving force for environmental protection enterprises. In the future VOCs governance process, the market will gradually eliminate low-quality products. Only by doing more professionally can environmental protection enterprises better serve the industry. With the continuous promotion of VOCs pollution prevention and control, VOCs governance has become imperative, but how to effectively control VOCs is a challenge, and even a difficult problem.

At present, there are two major difficulties in VOCs control: one is the wide range of sources, including natural and anthropogenic sources. In most cities in China, anthropogenic emissions of VOCs are much higher than natural sources, mainly from fixed source combustion, road traffic, solvent product use, and industrial process emissions such as petrochemicals and chemicals.

Secondly, VOCs have a complex composition. Unlike other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, VOCs are a single substance with a single physical and chemical characteristic. VOCs are a type of substance that includes alkanes, alkenes, aromatic hydrocarbons, halogenated hydrocarbons, oxygen-containing hydrocarbons, nitrogen hydrocarbons, sulfur hydrocarbons, low boiling polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and so on. According to the current identification by WHO, there are over 300 types of VOCs components, and monitoring such complex components is extremely difficult.

Thirdly, there is a lack of unified technical specifications for VOCs control. Many waste gas treatment plans do not yet have technical specifications, which poses significant difficulties for the supervision and evaluation of the effectiveness of enterprise waste gas treatment processes and results.

In addition, the legal support is not strong enough. The newly revised "Air Pollution Prevention and Control Law" has added requirements for VOCs pollution prevention and control, but the provisions are still principled requirements and require a large number of detailed provisions to support.

2017At the end of the year, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the "2018 Key Area Environmental Air Volatile Organic Compounds Monitoring Plan". The plan requires VOCs monitoring to be carried out in 78 key cities, with 117 substances monitored in municipalities directly under the central government, provincial capitals, and cities specifically designated in the state plan, and 70 substances monitored in prefecture level cities. The issuance of the plan provides important monitoring data support for VOCs governance.

The era of governance is coming

The explosive VOCs market has catalyzed the emergence of governance companies of varying sizes and shapes, with diverse and varied governance technologies. The current mainstream technologies in China include adsorption recovery, rotary wheel concentration, catalytic oxidation, thermal storage combustion, and other methods. However, due to the late start of VOCs research in China and insufficient investment in VOCs treatment, certain technologies or their combination processes have become many effective treatment tools.

At present, many companies, regardless of their industry or composition, adopt a policy of direct borrowing, which leads to the inability of companies to meet stable standards and requires repeated governance. There is no VOCs control technology for courage. Different industries have different VOCs components and emission characteristics, so a technical roadmap needs to be developed based on actual situations. Even within the same industry, different process technology routes may have differences, and even different air volumes and concentrations may result in different technology routes.

VOCsThere are dozens of processing methods, and their principles are mainly divided into two categories: recovery technology for valuable solvents and destruction technology for decomposing VOCs molecules. In practical applications, combination technology is more commonly used. Whether it is catalytic combustion or UV photolysis, the specific technical route depends on the actual working conditions of the customer. We cannot simply copy and paste, we can only analyze and govern the situation on a case by case basis. This may change the entire industry landscape.

In recent years, many provinces and cities have required the implementation of "one enterprise, one policy" governance for key VOCs emitting enterprises. Taking Guangdong as an example, for the controlled enterprises listed in the key supervision enterprise list of volatile organic compounds in Guangdong Province, a "one enterprise, one policy" rectification work must be carried out. Subsequently, various regions will dynamically update the list of key enterprises based on the results of pollution source surveys and VOCs emission investigations of fixed pollution source enterprises in various cities. Enterprises with an annual VOC emission of more than 3 tons can be included in general enterprise management based on local conditions in various regions.

Industry insiders say that the "one enterprise, one policy" policy means that local governments have recognized the importance of VOCs governance. In addition to implementing one policy for each enterprise, industry insiders also suggest implementing "one policy for each industry" in key industries. At the same time, some enterprises have also developed personalized management plans based on working conditions for governance. With the continuous development of the VOCs market, the industry will also face a reshuffle in the future.

From the 12th Five Year Plan to the 13th Five Year Plan, VOCs governance has gone through a process from scratch, from 'existence' to 'chaos'. In the future, the VOCs industry will gradually become standardized, achieving a transition from' chaos' to 'refinement' and truly entering the era of governance.