Emission Characteristics and Health Risks of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) Measured in a Typical Recycled Rubber Plant in China

Shuang Wang, Yucheng Yan, Xueying Gao, Hefeng Zhang, Yang Cui, Qiusheng He, Yuhang Wang and Xinming Wang
Additional contact information
Shuang Wang: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, No. 66 Waliu Road Wanbailin District, Taiyuan 030024, China
Yucheng Yan: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, No. 66 Waliu Road Wanbailin District, Taiyuan 030024, China
Xueying Gao: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, No. 66 Waliu Road Wanbailin District, Taiyuan 030024, China
Hefeng Zhang: Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (CRAES), Ministry of Environment Protection (MEP), Beijing 100012, China
Yang Cui: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, No. 66 Waliu Road Wanbailin District, Taiyuan 030024, China
Qiusheng He: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology, No. 66 Waliu Road Wanbailin District, Taiyuan 030024, China
Yuhang Wang: School of Earth and Atmospheric Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
Xinming Wang: State Key Laboratory of Organic Geochemistry, Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 14, 1-15

Abstract: The continued development of the automotive industry has led to a rapid increase in the amount of waste rubber tires, the problem of “black pollution” has become more serious but is often ignored. In this study, the emission characteristics, health risks, and environmental effects of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from a typical, recycled rubber plant were studied. A total of 15 samples were collected by summa canisters, and 100 VOC species were detected by the GC/MS-FID system. In this study, the total VOCs (TVOCs) concentration ranged from 1000 ± 99 to 19,700 ± 19,000 µg/m 3 , aromatics and alkanes were the predominant components, and m/p-xylene (14.63 ± 4.07%–48.87 ± 3.20%) could be possibly regarded as a VOCs emission marker. We also found that specific similarities and differences in VOCs emission characteristics in each process were affected by raw materials, production conditions, and process equipment. The assessment of health risks showed that devulcanizing and cooling had both non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic risks, yarding had carcinogenic risks, and open training and refining had potential carcinogenic risks. Moreover, m/p-xylene and benzene were the main non-carcinogenic species, while benzene, ethylbenzene, and carbon tetrachloride were the dominant risk compounds. In the evaluation results of L OH , m/p-xylene (25.26–67.87%) was identified as the most key individual species and should be prioritized for control. In conclusion, the research results will provide the necessary reference to standardize the measurement method of the VOCs source component spectrum and build a localized source component spectrum.

Keywords: volatile organic compounds; recycled rubber plant; source profiles; health risk assessment; OH radical loss rate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8753/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/14/8753/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:14:p:8753-:d:865766

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().