What are VOC's?

Question

I have been thrown into taking care of enviro. issues at our plant and need a little education.

Answer 1

First, a disclaimer.  I'm not an environmental engineer.  In fact, you might want to cross post this question in the "Science and Mathematics" section, since lots of engineering types tend to hang out there.

VOC stands for volatile organic compounds.   I believe that they are regulated by the EPA, meaning that there is a limit to the amount of VOCs you can exhaust from your plant.

In Industrial environments, these are often found in exhaust from paint booths and exhaust from drying operations.   If you are using different types of "stinky" chemicals (a technical term), then you may need to regulate your exhaust of these chemicals.

I only know about this because I've looked at a couple of projects involving "thermal oxidizers" which are basically just big boxes that heat up exhaust air to burn away any VOCs.

I would go to your state EPA website and search for "voc" and see what comes up.   Wikipedia would probably also have a good page about VOCs.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Volatile organic compounds, they R a substance which can vaporize and enter the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide

Answer 3

The "stinky" stuff in paint.

Answer 4

Volatile organic compounds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_or...

Answer 5

Volatile Organic Compounds - Volatile organic compounds are compounds that have a high vapor pressure and low water solubility.

Answer 6

Volatile Organic Compound.  The most common contaminants are BTEX (Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl benzene, Xylene), TCE (Trichloroethylene), PCE (tetrachloroethylene), MTBE, vinyl chloride, methylene chloride, chloroform, acetone, and etc.  These chemicals are hydro carbon that are under normal conditions will vaporize and enter the atmosphere.  Most of these compounds have come to pollute the soils and ground water because at one point they have been widely used and the hazards were little known.  Now that the hazards acociated with them are known and better understood, the usage has decrease or used carefully.  For instance TCE and PCE are associated with drycleaners, while BTEX is associated with gas stations.  

If you want to deal with issues with your plant I would go to you local state gov. department of environmental quality befor the EPA, each state generally dictates there own detection limits, in Texas we go by TRRP guidelines through Texas DEQ.

Look up some env. eng. companys they should be able to help out