Toward a national emission inventory for the catering industry in China

Wenjing Jin; Guorui Zhi; Yuzhe Zhang; Lei Wang; Sicong Guo; Yang Zhang; Zhigang Xue; Xinmin Zhang; Jinhong Du; Hao Zhang; Yanjun Ren; Peng Xu; Jinghua Ma; Wenjuan Zhao; Lingfeng Wang; Ruichen Fu

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142184

Toward a national emission inventory for the catering industry in China

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Feb 1:754:142184. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142184. Epub 2020 Sep 4.

Authors

Wenjing Jin¹, Guorui Zhi², Yuzhe Zhang³, Lei Wang¹, Sicong Guo⁴, Yang Zhang¹, Zhigang Xue¹, Xinmin Zhang¹, Jinhong Du¹, Hao Zhang¹, Yanjun Ren¹, Peng Xu¹, Jinghua Ma¹, Wenjuan Zhao¹, Lingfeng Wang⁵, Ruichen Fu⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China. Electronic address: zhigr@craes.org.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China; College of Science, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing 100012, China; College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China.
⁵ Heze Environmental Protection Research Institute, Bureau of Ecology and Environment, Heze 274000, China.
⁶ Linfen Applied Technology Research Institute of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Ecology and Environment, Linfen 041000, China.

PMID: 32920411
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142184

Abstract

Catering oil fumes are a major hazard to human health. In particular, the typical Chinese cooking style is characterised by a high temperature frying process that produces high levels of cooking oil fumes. However, limited data relating to this sector mean that national emission inventory data specific to the catering service industry do not exist. To address above deficiency and thus to establish the inventory of a city, or a province, or even a country, a door-to-door survey campaign was launched in the Chinese cities of Heze and Linfen to determine the structure of local catering industries. Data revealed that the number of catering businesses per 10⁴ people was 17 ± 4. Of these, 3.0 ± 1.4, 15.0 ± 1.4, and 82.0 ± 0.0% were classified as large, medium, and small enterprises, respectively. Furthermore, the installation rates of fume purifiers were 74 ± 13, 66 ± 9, and 51 ± 14% for large, medium, and small enterprises, respectively, with net removal efficiencies of 63 ± 11, 50 ± 7, and 31 ± 8%, respectively. This information was extrapolated across all provincial regions of China to construct a provincial and national emission inventory. In 2017, China's national catering industry released approximately 34 kt of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), 38 kt of particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM_2.5), 48 kt of particulate matter with a diameter less than 10 μm (PM₁₀), 1 kt of black carbon (BC), and 27 kt of organic carbon (OC). A significant correlation was observed between vegetable oil consumption and emissions (e.g., for VOCs, y = 14.94 x + 76.50, R² = 0.87, where y is VOCs emissions and x is vegetable oil consumption), indirectly corroborating the rationality of the inventory. Moreover, this correlation provides the potential for a dynamic inventory based on vegetable oil consumption. Future studies are proposed to address more influential factors to improve the reliability of the national inventory and refer to big data, rather than door-to-door investigation, to identify the amount of catering service businesses in a region.

Keywords: Catering service industry; Cooking oil fumes; Emission inventory; Heze; Linfen; Vegetable oil consumption.