The source profile of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is essential for establishing reactivity- and toxicity-based emission inventories and developing effective air pollution control strategies. In this paper, the establishment of VOC source profiles and the VOC emission characteristics are reviewed in the petrochemical, solvent use, and chemical industries, and the most up-to-date profiles of the three industries in China are compiled via necessary adjustment and reconstruction of the test data from the literature. Alkanes dominated and OVOCs were often neglected in the overall petrochemical industry and refined processes. They accounted for 60.6% and 3.2% in the merged profiles. Aromatics and OVOCs dominated in the industrial solvent use industry. OVOCs were the most prevalent in the printing and dyeing industries, furniture manufacturing industries, and automobile coating process, whereas aromatics were major contributors of the total VOCs in metal surface coating, shipping coating, and other surface coating industries in the merged profiles. A wide range of products and limited profile studies were obtained in chemical industry, and the compositions of VOCs varied significantly in the production of 30 products in the merged profile. The future research directions of VOC source profiles are discussed, mainly focusing on the sampling, establishment, and evaluation of VOC profiles.

The use of attapulgite (ATP)-based materials for adsorption of pollutants from water and wastewater has received growing attention. However, recovering ATP-based adsorbents remains a challenge. In this study, a magnetic adsorbent ATP/CoFe₂O₄ with high tannic acid (TA) adsorptive capacity was fabricated via a facile co-precipitation approach and was well characterized. The loaded CoFe₂O₄ particles were embedded into the adsorbent surfaces to allow magnetic separability. For this material, its TA adsorption kinetics, isotherm behavior, and magnetic separation efficiency are reported. The developed magnetic composites had rapid sorption kinetics of 3 h, high sorption capacity of 109.36 mg/g, and good magnetic separation efficiency of 80%. The used ATP/CoFe₂O₄ was successfully regenerated by NaOH and reused five times without a substantial reduction in TA removal and magnetic performance. Intermolecular hydrogen bonding formation and surface complexation were identified as the sorption mechanisms of TA by ATP/CoFe₂O₄.

Polydopamine-modified granule organo-attapulgite adsorbent (PDA-GOAT) was facilely prepared via a dip-coating approach. The samples were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Surface area and pore size were calculated from BET method by N₂ adsorption-desorption isotherm. The adsorption behaviour of methylene blue (MB) onto PDA-GOAT was systematically investigated. The experimental data revealed that the adsorption process fitted well with the pseudo-second order kinetics equation and adsorption isotherm fitted better with the Langmuir model. Thermodynamic analyses illustrated that MB adsorption onto PDA-GOAT was a physisorption endothermic process. Importantly, PDA-GOAT can be regenerated by NaBH₄ aqueous solution. The obtained results proves that PDA-GOAT can be a superior reusable adsorbent for the removal of MB from effluent.