Atmospheric BTEX concentrations in the vicinity of the crude oil refinery of the Baltic region

Abstract

Among chemical industries, petroleum refineries have been identified as large emitters of a wide variety of pollutants. Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) form an important group of aromatic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) because of their role in the troposphere chemistry and the risk posed to human health. A very large crude oil refinery of the Baltic States (200,000 bbl/day) is situated in the northern, rural part of Lithuania, 10 km from the town of Mažeikiai (Lithuania). The objectives of this study were: (1) to determine of atmospheric levels of BTEX in the region rural and urban parts at the vicinity of the crude oil refinery; and (2) to investigate the effect of meteorological parameters (wind speed, wind direction, temperature, pressure, humidity) on the concentrations measured. The averaged concentration of benzene varied from 2.12 ppbv in the rural areas to 2.75 ppbv in the urban areas where the traffic was determined to be a dominant source of BTEX emissions. Our study showed that concentration of benzene, as strictly regulated air pollutant by EU Directive 2008/50/EC, did not exceed the limit of 5 ppbv in the region in the vicinity of the crude oil refinery during the investigated period. No significant change in air quality in the vicinity of the oil refinery was discovered, however, an impact of the industry on the background air quality was detected. The T/B ratio (0.50-0.81) that was much lower than 2.0, identified other sources of pollution than traffic.

One year monitoring of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from an oil-gas station in northwest China

“…As discussed above, the emission from vehicles was not obvious from the diurnal variation of BTEX and the solvent usage was negligible in the study area. The ratios of m, p-xylenes/ethylbenzene in this study (2.2±1.2) were 30 within the ranges reported at a petrochemical area in southern Taiwan (1.5-2.6) (Hsieh et al, 2006) and the vicinity of a crude oil refinery at the Baltic region (3.0-4.0) (Baltrėnas et al, 2011). Therefore, BTEX in this area was mainly from the oil refinery emission.…”

“…The results obtained in this study indicated that there were other factors affecting the seasonal variation, such as source emissions. BTEX mainly originated from vehicle exhaust , solvent usage Yuan et al, 2010) and petrochemical industry (Na and Kim, 2001;Hsieh et al, 2006;Baltrėnas et al, 2011). As discussed above, the emission from vehicles was not obvious from the diurnal variation of BTEX and the solvent usage was negligible in the study area.…”

“…Ambient ratios for VOC species holding similar reaction rates with OH radicals can reflect the source features, as these compounds are equally affected by the photochemical processing and the new emission inputs (Russo et al, 2010;Baltrėnas et al, 2011;Miller et al, 2012). For example, n-butane and i-butane have similar reaction rates with the OH radicals, with the differences less than <10% and the ratios of these pair species indicated different sources.…”

Air Quality Impacts of Petroleum Refining and Petrochemical Industries

“…This was observed in Lithuania, which has a very large crude oil refinery. Benzene concentrations in air in the urban region exceeded the rural region by 0.63 ppb [13]. Air quality at rural regions near these industries was influenced only by the industrial emissions and traffic emissions played a minor role.…”

“…Regulated emissions and leaks both contribute to the VOCs concentration [12]. Aromatic VOCs are mainly comprised of Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, and Xylene (BTEX) [13], and benzene is of particular concern since it is carcinogenic. VOCs are associated with a number of potential health effects.…”