Characteristics of ozone and ozone precursors (VOCs and NOx) around a petroleum refinery in Beijing, China.

A field measurement campaign for ozone and ozone precursors (VOCs and NOx) was conducted in summer 2011 around a petroleum refinery in the Beijing rural region. Three observation sites were arranged, one at southwest of the refinery as the background, and two at northeast of the refinery as the downwind receptors. Monitoring data revealed the presence of serious surface O3 pollution with the characteristics of high average daily mean and maximum concentrations (64.0 and 145.4 ppbV in no-rain days, respectively) and multi-peak diurnal variation. For NOx, the average hourly concentrations of NO2 and NO were in the range of 20.5-46.1 and 1.8-6.4 ppbV, respectively. For VOC measurement, a total of 51 compounds were detected. Normally, TVOCs at the background site was only dozens of ppbC, while TVOCs at the downwind sites reached several hundreds of ppbC. By subtracting the VOC concentrations at background, chemical profiles of VOC emission from the refinery were obtained, mainly including alkanes (60.0% +/- 4.3%), alkenes (21.1% +/- 5.5%) and aromatics (18.9% +/- 3.9%). Moreover, some differences in chemical profiles for the same measurement hours were observed between the downwind sites; the volume ratios of alkanes with low reactivity and those of alkenes with high reactivity respectively showed an increasing trend and a decreasing trend. Finally, based on temporal and spatial variations of VOC mixing ratios, their photochemical degradations and dispersion degradations were estimated to be 0.15-0.27 and 0.42-0.62, respectively, by the photochemical age calculation method, indicating stronger photochemical reactions around the refinery.