On 26th June, China Ministry of Environment and Ecology (MEE) released the Comprehensive Management Plan for Volatile Organic Compounds in Key Industries [1] to strengthen the guidance on governance of VOCs. Recently, China issued several national standards to complete the management of VOCs. In particular, they provide more detailed regulations on VOCs emissions in some key industries. (Chemlinked News Ⅰ, News Ⅱ) According to the MEE research, the emission of VOCs has become a major source of atmospheric and environmental pollution. VOCs are important precursors in the formation of PM2.5 particulates and ozone (O3). The new comprehensive management plan is expected to improve pollution control of VOCs in key industries and in key regions.
Five major problems in the management of VOCs are pointed out in the plan, they are:
Insufficient source control
Fugitive emission
Simple and inefficient pollution control facilities
Non-standard operation management
Inadequate monitoring
To deal with these problems, the plan provides the targeted control methods and requirements for major governance industries such as petrochemical, coating, packaging and printing, oil storage and gas station. The improvement of the overall treatment of VOCs in industrial parks is also mentioned in the plan, as well as the supervisory responsibilities of the relevant government departments in this operation.
The five annexes of the program introduce the major monitoring areas, focused VOCs substances, as well as the requirements for record keeping, industrial enterprises governance points and the petroleum products storage, transportation and sales governance points. The main focuses of the entire process of VOCs emission from the source to the disposal are reflected in the last three annexes.