VOC emission reduction is expected to unlock a market worth tens of billions

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The last edit to this post was made by 68589544 on 2016-11-16 at 14:24. Professor Ye Daiqi, Secretary-General of the VOCs Pollution Control Committee of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences, said that **the relevant authorities will soon assign tasks related to reducing VOC emissions to various key areas and industries. Completing these tasks could drive a market value of over 10 billion yuan for VOC monitoring services and over 100 billion yuan for treatment services. However, it is essential to pay attention to online monitoring; the relevant authorities should promptly establish unified and comprehensive standards for VOC monitoring in order to improve the level of monitoring technology. Otherwise, emission reduction efforts may amount to nothing more than mere words. Place emphasis on online monitoring to turn potential markets into reality. “To achieve the goal of reducing overall VOCs emissions, it is essential to pay attention to monitoring, particularly online monitoring.” ”Industry experts emphasize that without online monitoring, it becomes possible for companies to engage in fraud, which **reduces** the pressure on them to reduce emissions, making it difficult to ensure that the emission control facilities operate consistently and meet the required standards. Companies are likely to install low-quality, inefficient, and inexpensive treatment equipment merely to cope with the manual inspections by environmental protection authorities. “If that is the case, VCOs’ emission reductions could turn into a mere formality, and the potentially huge market is likely to turn into a ‘bubble’. ”Ye Daiki believes. Du Yinshan, general manager of Chongqing Kelan Environmental Protection Industry Co., Ltd., said that it is best to install online monitoring equipment both at the wastewater discharge points and within the industrial parks, in order to monitor the operation of the enterprises’ environmental protection facilities. This, in turn, encourages polluting enterprises to install pollution control facilities and promotes the development of the VCOs treatment industry. Monitoring VCOs requires unified and comprehensive monitoring methods and standards. It is understood that China introduced the standard \"HJ-381999: Gas Chromatographic Method for the Determination of Total Non-Methane Hydrocarbons in Emissions from Fixed Pollution Sources\" as early as 1999; however, no technical specifications for online VOC monitoring have been established to date. As a result, the methods used for online VOC monitoring are diverse and of varying quality, leading to chaos in the market. “At present, China has not yet established emission lists for pollution sources in key industries such as petrochemicals, organic chemicals, packaging and printing, furniture, and electronics; as a result, enterprises and monitoring agencies do not know which specific VOCs should be targeted during monitoring. ”Ye Daiqi explained. Therefore, the responsible persons of the relevant regulatory agencies stated that **unified and comprehensive VOCs monitoring methods, standards, as well as emission lists for pollution sources in key industries should be established as soon as possible. Promote the orderly and healthy development of the VOCs monitoring and control industry. Local monitoring stations have a high demand for portable field testing equipment. At present, cities such as Tianjin and Shanghai have explicitly required online monitoring of VOCs pollution sources. Although other regions have not yet issued such requirements, they have also introduced online monitoring measures in practice. “With the further implementation of VOCs emission reduction measures, it is expected that the monitoring stations under local environmental protection departments will establish a VOCs monitoring system that combines online monitoring with regular surveillance testing. ”Gao Wu, the chief engineer at Beijing Xiedilong Technology Co., Ltd., believes that at present, the vast majority of monitoring stations in China have the capability to detect VOCs in a laboratory setting, but they lack the ability for rapid on-site testing; therefore, portable or mobile on-site testing equipment is needed. “Not only local monitoring stations need to conduct VOCs monitoring/testing, but emission-producing enterprises and treatment enterprises also need to carry out such monitoring/testing to facilitate emission reduction and treatment. Therefore, in recent years, the demand for VOCs monitoring/detection equipment is set to **increase, offering development opportunities for equipment manufacturers. ”Ye Daiki said. Due to the wide variety of VOCs, their complex composition, large variations in concentration levels, and significant differences in reactivity, traditional monitoring technologies and systems designed for limited areas are unable to extract useful information from the data; as a result, they fail to achieve the purpose of monitoring and cannot address the issue of unclear figures regarding VOCs emissions. Furthermore, the monitoring of VOCs in China started relatively late, and compared to developed countries, its technical foundation is still weak. In response to this, a few years ago, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology launched a **special project for the development of major scientific instruments and equipment**, which included research and development on automatic detection devices for volatile organic compounds, in order to make preparations for improving the capabilities for VOCs monitoring and detection. According to Gao Wu, his company participated in the implementation of the **Special Project for the Development of Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment: “Development and Application of Online/Portable Monitoring Devices for VOCs from Fixed Pollution Sources” in 2013. For fixed VOC emission sources, online monitoring equipment and portable testing instruments have been developed. Online monitoring equipment for VOCs in atmospheric environmental quality has also been developed. Small and medium-sized enterprises need efficient and inexpensive monitoring/detection equipment. “Currently, several domestic companies have the capability to produce high-precision monitoring and testing equipment for VOCs; it is necessary to vigorously promote the development of such products in order to meet market demands. ”Gao Wu explained. However, since 70% of the domestic enterprises that emit VOCs are small and medium-sized enterprises, if the cost of instrumentation and equipment is too high, it places a significant financial burden on these companies. It is understood that for ordinary pollution sources, only the monitoring/detection of non-methane hydrocarbons needs to be considered; the cost of monitoring/detection equipment is relatively low, with a set of such equipment costing between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan. “However, for key pollution sources, in addition to monitoring/testing total non-methane hydrocarbons, it is also necessary to monitor/test specific pollutants such as benzene derivatives; the equipment required is expensive, with costs ranging from 500,000 to 1,000,000 yuan. This is no small amount for small and medium-sized enterprises. ”Industry experts believe. Therefore, developing efficient and inexpensive VOCs monitoring/detection equipment is also an urgent task for the industry. In this regard, Zhao Guowei, technical director of Hangzhou Rainbow Environmental Protection Technology Engineering Co., Ltd., believes that VOCs monitoring is a matter concerning the entire industry, not just one particular company. He suggested that **the relevant departments organize research teams and select capable enterprises and research institutions to develop technologies and equipment for VOCs monitoring.