4.8 Article

Off-Site Flux Estimates of Volatile Organic Compounds from Oil and Gas Production Facilities Using Fast-Response Instrumentation

Journal

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Volume 54, Issue 3, Pages 1385-1394

Publisher

AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b05621

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Clean Air Task' Force (CATF)
  2. University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Flux estimates of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from oil and gas (O&G) production facilities are fundamental in understanding hazardous air pollutant concentrations and ozone formation. Previous off-site emission estimates derive fluxes by ratioing VOCs measured in canisters to methane fluxes measured in the field. This study uses the Environmental Protection Agency's Other Test Method 33A (OTM 33A) and a fast-response proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer to make direct measurements of VOC emissions from O&G facilities in the Upper Green River Basin, Wyoming. We report the first off-site direct flux estimates of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes from upstream O&G production facilities and find that these estimates can vary significantly from flux estimates derived using both the canister ratio technique and from the emission inventory. The 32 OTM 33A flux estimates had arithmetic mean (and 95% CI) as follows: benzene 17.83 (0.22, 98.05) g/h, toluene 34.43 (1.01, 126.76) g/h, C8 aromatics 37.38 (1.06, 225.34) g/h, and methane 2.3 (1.7, 3.1) kg/h. A total of 20% of facilities measured accounted for similar to 67% of total BTEX emissions. While this heavy tail is less dramatic than previous observations of methane in other basins, it is more prominent than that predicted by the emission inventory.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.8
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available