Evaporative quality of Nigeria’s gasoline: truck loading perspective

Abstract

Gasoline emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that contribute to ground-level ozone formation with adverse health effects. Gasoline evaporation also results in economic losses. Hence, there is a need to understand the extent of avoidable economic losses and environmental damage. Furthermore, it becomes pertinent to investigate effective channels for reducing the emission of VOCs by preventing leakage during trucking and improving the regulation of gasoline evaporative quality (such as vapour pressure). This study focused on emissions during the truck loading of gasoline at petroleum depots in Nigeria. Gasoline evaporative emissions depend on ambient temperature, gasoline volatility, control of leakage and recovery systems. This study determined the VOC emission factor and the equivalent gasoline losses under different conditions. The results from the analyses showed that the higher the evaporative quality of the gasoline, the greater the VOCs emitted into the environment—with adverse health implications. Specifically, as much as 8510 tonnes of VOCs are issued annually from the truck loading of gasoline in Nigeria. Consequently, the country loses approximately 0.058% of total truck-out gasoline to evaporation and leakages during truck loading alone. This study provides evidence that a reduction in vapour quality with efficient recovery and control regulations would reduce VOC emissions and equivalent gasoline loss by 97.67%.

Keywords

Gasoline / Volatile organic compounds / Emission reduction / Trucking / Evaporative emission / Ambient temperature

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