【Haichuan Chemical Salary News】The Ministry of Ecology and Environment plans to launch a major inspection involving a large number of enterprises in the petrochemical industry and beyond?
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The Ministry of Ecology and Environment plans to launch a comprehensive inspection covering a large number of enterprises in the petroleum and chemical industries. It has set out to conduct inspections of industrial parks, enterprise clusters, and key enterprises under strict oversight, in order to accurately determine the levels of volatile organic compound (VOCs) emissions. Currently, the number of days with ozone as the primary pollutant exceeding regulatory limits accounts for 41.8% of the total such days, second only to PM2.5 (which accounts for 45%), while volatile organic compounds are the main cause of ozone formation. A reporter from Yicai News learned today (the 19th) from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that proposals for relevant action plans to address these issues are currently being sought for feedback. “In recent years, ozone pollution has become increasingly prominent, serving as an important factor affecting the environmental air quality during the summer months across the country. ”At the regular press conference held by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in April, Liu Youbin, the ministry’s spokesperson, said that starting from June, supervision and support efforts to prevent and control summer ozone pollution will be focused on regions such as the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and its surrounding regions, the Fenwei Plain, the area along the borders of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the urban agglomeration in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. These efforts aim to promote effective management and precise control of volatile organic compounds. At the press conference, Liu Bingjiang, director of the Department of Atmospheric Environment at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, explained that in the past two years, air quality across the country has continued to improve, yet ozone concentrations have increased instead of decreasing; in 2019, ozone concentrations in 337 cities nationwide rose by 6.5% compared to the previous year. Liu Bingjiang said that from July to September last year, many provinces across the country experienced hot and dry weather conditions, which led to a significant increase in ozone concentrations compared to the previous year, with a marked rise in the number of days when these concentrations exceeded safe levels. If similar weather conditions occur again this summer, it will have a significant impact on achieving the target for the proportion of good days.
Liu Bingjiang analyzed that ozone precursors are nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. Through years of efforts to address this issue, some progress has been made in reducing nitrogen oxides from elevated sources, but there has been no significant reduction in emissions from mobile sources and numerous industrial furnaces； Moreover, VOC emissions originate from numerous and dispersed sources; they have not yet been effectively controlled, and the infrastructure for their treatment is weak. According to the \"2020 Action Plan for Controlling Volatile Organic Compounds (Draft for Comment)\", as of July 1, 2020, the production, sales, and use of ship coatings and floor coatings must comply with the newly established **limits on hazardous substances in products**. Building coatings and adhesives in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region must meet the requirements of the \"Standards for Limits on Volatile Organic Compound Content in Building Coatings and Adhesives\". Coating of production facilities for corrosion, water resistance, and rust prevention should be carried out away from the summer season, or coatings with low volatile organic compound content should be used.
As planned, the environmental protection authorities will guide enterprises in industries such as petrochemicals, chemicals, coal chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides to arrange their maintenance and shutdown plans in a reasonable manner. By the end of June, local authorities are to complete inspections of industrial parks, enterprise clusters, and key enterprises related to volatile organic compounds, and establish management records for each of them. Special attention is given to investigating enterprise clusters led by industries in the chemical sector such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, coatings, inks, adhesives, dyes, daily chemicals, and chemical additives, as well as 30 other industries including textiles and printing, and injection molding. “Under the current circumstances, enterprises are more often held accountable in accordance with laws and regulations serta emission standards, to ensure that pollution control facilities operate properly and that these standards are fulfilled. ”Liu Bingjiang said that starting from July 1, environmental protection agencies across the country will carry out special enforcement actions to impose penalties on enterprises that fail to meet emission standards consistently or do not comply with the requirements for unorganized emissions, in accordance with laws and regulations.
To encourage enterprises to take action on the control of volatile organic compounds, the aforementioned action plan (draft for comments) proposes increasing financial support; special funds allocated for air pollution control at the national level, as well as those provided by various provinces for environmental protection, should be directed toward the control of volatile organic compounds. Projects related to the control of such compounds, comprehensive improvement of industrial parks and enterprise clusters, and the development of monitoring and surveillance capabilities should be given priority when included in the project pipeline.