VOCs emission profiles from rural cooking and heating in Guanzhong Plain, China and its potential effect on regional O<sub>3</sub> and SOA formation

Abstract

Solid fuels (i.e., biomass fuel and coal) burning for cooking and heating emit large amounts of pollutants into atmosphere including particulate matter (PM) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this study, VOCs were directly collected in chimneys of residential cooking and heating stoves in Guanzhong Plain using adsorbent tube approach followed by thermal desorption-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TD-GC/MS) analysis. Emission factors (EFs) of targeted VOCs varied from 47.2 ± 19.4 to 3121.3 ± 1592.4 mg kg<sup>−1</sup> which had a descending order of biomass straw > woody fuel >> coal fuels. A remarkable finding is that semi-gasifier could not suppress the VOCs emission even though a high efficiency in reduction of PM was demonstrated. In addition, high values of coefficients of divergence (CD) (most > 0.5) support that there were large variations on the VOC profiles with different fuels and stoves. Ozone formation potential (OFP) of VOCs from solid fuel burning ranged from 50.3 ± 19.6 to 5914.8 ± 1340.5 mg kg<sup>−1</sup>, contributing ~ 20 % of ozone formation in Guanzhong atmosphere. The values were much larger than the contribution from PM of 6.7 %. However, much lower secondary organic aerosol formation potentials (SOAP) (0.5 ± 0.2–45.6 ± 3.0 mg kg<sup>−1</sup>) of VOCs emitted from solid fuel burning were estimated. The values were two orders of magnitude lower than OFP and only accounted for 0.23 % of the SOA in Guanzhong in 2013. The results of this study demonstrated that the VOCs emission from solid fuel burning had a strong impact to the ozone pollution in Guanzhong Plain.

Air Quality and Climate Impacts of Biomass Use as an Energy Source: A Review

“…In addition, primary emissions of organic species can go on to form secondary organic aerosol (SOA) which is particulate mass formed in the atmosphere from a complex series of reactions of a large number of organic species resulting in the formation of low volatility and/or high solubility oxidation products that partition to the particle phase. SOA formation from biomass emissions is also highly variable. , …”

“…SOA formation from biomass emissions is also highly variable. 60,61 It is clear that to fully understand the impacts of biomass burning, a wide range of compounds needs to be considered from the point of view of emissions factors for both gas and aerosol phase species, and their impact on atmospheric concentrations of pollutants with potential health risks. These issues will be covered in sections 7 and 5 respectively.…”

Synergetic effect of N/P/B coordinated Fe/Co on carbon support catalysts for removing odor-chemicals of cooking source

“…Thus, main odorchemicals, for instant, carbonyls (C1-C8) are needed to be environment-friendly removed so that minimum effect in term of human health and outdoor air within the specific range [3,6]. In the odor-chemicals of cooking source, volatile aldehydes have certain effects in inducing lung cancer and respiratory illness [7][8][9], moreover, these odor-chemicals are active at occurring volatile chain-scission reactions to form methane [10], consuming NO x (nitrogen oxide) in air to form O 3 under high temperatures, electrostatic precipitators, strong light and oxidizer [11][12][13].…”