Full length articleSynergistic reduction potentials for VOCs in solvent-using industrial sectors: A case study of the packaging and printing industry in China
Graphical abstract
Introduction
As an important precursor of ozone, volatile organic compound (VOCs) have become the main drivers behind ozone atmospheric pollution in different regions including China, thereby necessitating the reduction of this pollution given its adverse effects on human health (Li et al., 2020; Tan et al., 2018; Wei et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2021). The packaging and printing (P&P) industry is one of the main industries which use solvents as industrial input. As the P&P industry uses large amounts of inks, thinners and ink cleaners, that contain large amounts of VOCs with moderately high chemical activity, efficient VOC control strategies should be implemented within the industry (Coenye et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2021; Shen et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2021). The total VOC emissions from the P&P industry exceed 2 million tons, accounting for approximately 20% of the total emissions in China (Environment Federation Committee, 2017; Ministry of Ecology and Environment, 2020a). Moreover, the P&P industry in China is dominated by small- and medium-sized enterprises, with somewhat poor pollution control capability and few, if any, emission controls. The fugitive emissions of VOCs in the P&P industry in China are intense, and the main practical emission reduction control, namely, end-of-pipe (EOP) treatment, is costly and normally generates abundant CO2 emissions (Jiang et al., 2021). Therefore, a coordinated VOC control strategy that integrates emission reduction potential, cost-benefits, and carbon reduction is critically required.
Previous studies have mostly focused on analyzing the components of VOC emissions, chemical reactivity, environmental health effects of different production processes in the P&P industry and VOC reduction (Aydemir and Özsoy, 2020; Shen et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2021). From an environmental management perspective, managers are more interested in how to improve the management efficiency and data quality (Salemdeeb et al., 2021). The key indicators of such improvement are advances in the technical economy of emission reduction and the synergy of VOCs and carbon emission control in the overall pollution control (Kliopova-Galickaja and Kliaugaite, 2018). Water-based inks and other raw materials contribute to both pollution and carbon reduction in complex ways (BASF, 2022; He et al., 2021; Piluso et al., 2009; Saito and Kasei, 2021). To reduce industrial pollutant emissions, various national and international laws and policies have been introduced to restrict the amount of solvents used (EPA, 2018; EuPIA, 2010, 2013; GB38507-2020, 2020; Ministry of Ecology and Environment, 2020b, 2020c; The Central People's Government, 2022). As clean raw materials are expensive and exacerbate the costs of the drying process, cost-benefit should be also considered to encourage an industry or an enterprise to reduce emissions. However, few studies have considered the VOC emission reduction potential, cost-benefits, and carbon emissions of different emission reduction strategies in a synergistic analysis (Aydemir and Özsoy, 2020; Chen et al., 2021; He et al., 2021; Saito and Kasei, 2021). For instance, Kliopova-Galickaja and Kliaugaite (2018) studied the VOC emission reduction potential and cost-benefits of different emission reduction options for flexible packaging printing plants. They have shown that by replacing solvent-based inks with water-based inks, one can achieve the best economic benefits (Kliopova-Galickaja and Kliaugaite, 2018). Although current VOCs reduction measures are somewhat effective, it is challenging to introduce an all-encompassing systematic control over the whole production process due to the long-term neglect of the mining and utilization of ecological environment statistical data. Given the dearth of the existing methods, it is also difficult to directly optimize the VOC control strategy based on the product - raw material (source) - process - EOP of the P&P industry in different regions. This may be why few previous studies have focused on the whole-process reduction potentials of the P&P industry, the coordinated reduction scheme of carbon emissions, and cost-benefits.
To fill this gap, we developed a novel comprehensive assessment system for optimizing synergistic control strategies for VOCs for the P&P industry, an auxiliary industry that serves offices, living, and industrial packaging. In this way, the VOC emission reduction needs can be met, while the associated cost-benefits and carbon reduction in China can be maximized. As the product types, the product types, VOC generation/emission characteristics may vary depending on the region, we selected five different scale regions in China: Nanyang City, Lanzhou City, Shunde District of Foshan City, Shenzhen City, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (Kudo et al., 2020). Methodologically, the proposed system combines a source–process–end (S-P-E) coordinated emission reduction potential evaluation model (SPECM), previously established by the team based on the production process (Sun et al., 2021), cost-effective analysis, and carbon reduction analysis. Our proposed system represents a precise method for tailoring emission reduction potentials with higher cost benefits and better carbon emission reduction, based on which one can optimize the existing control strategies depending on the regional characteristics of the industry.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we describe an optimization model, including the data and structure of this comprehensive assessment system, and provide an overview of the case areas. Section 3 presents the optimization results, including the VOC generation and emission control characteristics of the packaging printing industry in different regions as well as the optimized emission reduction scheme. The advantages and limitations of the synergistic control of the emission reduction potential, cost benefits, and carbon reduction are discussed in Section 4. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the findings of this study.
Section snippets
Methods
The proposed comprehensive assessment system consists of five modules, as illustrated in Fig. 1. First, the raw material–production process–EOP with reduction potential was identified according to the SPECM model (Sun et al., 2021). Then, according to the identified main production processes, technical measures for emission reduction from the source, process and EOP were formulated and tailored to the production type. Third, the whole-process synergistic emission reduction potentials,
Solvent-based raw materials are the main source of VOCs
By considering those products and production technologies that are currently prevalent in the P&P industry, we studied the VOC generation/emission characteristics of the P&P industry in different regions using the available data. In this context, Fig. 2 shows that the VOC emissions in the highly industrial Shunde District of Foshan City were found to be comparable to those of Lanzhou City, but strongly exceed those of the Nanyang City and of the entire provincial-level administrative region—the
Collaborative control of the overall process leads to better reduction benefits
We compared the reduction potentials, cost-benefits, and carbon emissions of the different reduction pathways using a comprehensive assessment system. Fig. 6 demonstrates that the EOP reduction potentials of Nanyang City, Lanzhou City, Shunde District of Foshan City, Shenzhen City and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region exceed 20 t, 450 t, 260 t, 4400 t, and 280 t, respectively, mostly due to the poor control and management of the P&P industry in China. The cost-benefits of EOP ranged from
Conclusion
This study investigated the synergistic control strategies of VOCs of solvent-using industry in different regions of China by developing a novel comprehensive assessment system based on overall process coordinated reduction. The results demonstrated that the applicable control strategies in each region are cost-beneficial and induce only low carbon emissions, thereby indicating that the proposed comprehensive assessment system can be used for formulating tailored emission control strategies.
Supporting information
Supplementary data
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Yuanyuan Sun: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Yue Zhang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Huihong Zhao: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Qi Qiao: Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Data curation. Lu Bai: Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Data curation.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Budget Surplus of Central Financial Science and Technology Plan (2021-JY-08) and project of Gansu Province pollution source census dynamic update survey and results application (2020zfcg01199).
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