EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

An Innovative Method for BTEX Emission Inventory and Development of Mitigation Measures in Developing Countries—A Case Study: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Quoc Bang Ho (), Hoang Ngoc Khue Vu, Thoai Tam Nguyen and Thi Thao Nguyen Huynh
Additional contact information
Quoc Bang Ho: Institute for Environment and Resources (IER), 142 To Hien Thanh St., Dist. 10, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam
Hoang Ngoc Khue Vu: Institute for Environment and Resources (IER), 142 To Hien Thanh St., Dist. 10, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam
Thoai Tam Nguyen: Institute for Environment and Resources (IER), 142 To Hien Thanh St., Dist. 10, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam
Thi Thao Nguyen Huynh: Institute for Environment and Resources (IER), 142 To Hien Thanh St., Dist. 10, HCMC, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 23, 1-14

Abstract: Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (BTEX) are carcinogenic pollutants. However, the average concentration in 1 h of some pollutants belonging to BTEX, such as benzene, in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) is higher than the national standard QCVN 06:2009/BTNMT by about ten times. This research is the first to calculate the emission of BTEX for developing countries on a city scale. This paper developed a method to calculate cold emission factors based on hot emission factors for BTEX. Five spreadsheets developed and calculated these cold emission factors for five vehicle categories. A comprehensive emission inventory (EI) for BTEX was conducted in HCMC to determine the cause of BTEX pollution. An innovative methodology with bottom-up and top-down combination was applied to conduct BTEX EI, in which the EMISENS model was utilized to generate the EI for road traffic sources, and the emission factors method was utilized for other emission sources. Among emission reasons, motorcycles contribute the highest to HCMC air pollution, responsible for 93%, 90%, 98.9%, and 91.5% of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, respectively. Cars contributed 5%, 6%, 0.8%, and 6.5% of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene, respectively. For LDVs, the emission from benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene accounted for 1%, 2%, 0.2%, and 1.9%. The major reasons for point sources were metal production, which had 1%, 2%, and 0.1% for benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes emissions. The area source had a minority emission of total BTEX in Ho Chi Minh City. Our findings can be used to invest in the most significant sources to reduce BTEX in HCMC. Our approach can be applied in similar urban areas in BTEX EI. This research also developed nine measures to reduce BTEX in HCMC for human health protection.

Keywords: air quality modeling; BTEX; emission inventory; Ho Chi Minh City; low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) (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:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/16156/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/23/16156/ (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:23:p:16156-:d:991854

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 ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:23:p:16156-:d:991854