A study of VOCs in waste incinerator plumes and landfill emissions via drone sounding

Incineration is a waste treatment method that involves burning the organic components of waste. While this process significantly reduces the volume of waste sent to landfills, it also generates environmental pollution and poses potential risks to public health. Although volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from some combustion processes have been studied, VOCs released in the form of aerial plumes from incinerator smokestacks have rarely been evaluated. This knowledge gap is primarily due to the lack of suitable observation techniques for accurately detecting and capturing smokestack plumes. In this study, we employed novel drone-based observation and sampling techniques to investigate the characteristic VOCs emitted from a waste incineration smokestack. Additionally, we analyzed VOC emissions from landfills to provide a comparative assessment. Our findings indicate that incinerator plumes presented higher proportions of ethane, propane, ethyne, benzene, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, and benzaldehyde, while nonanal and decanal originated mainly from landfills. Another species of interest is trimethylsilanol (TMSiOH), which has been observed in particularly high concentrations in both incinerator plumes and landfill emissions. TMSiOH levels from these sources were significantly higher than those detected in urban, rural, roadside, and background atmospheric environments, highlighting its potential as a characteristic marker of incinerator plumes and landfill emissions to identify pollution sources. Overall, this study demonstrates that unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based sounding enables real-time detection of aerial plumes and characterization of incinerator plumes and landfill emissions. In addition, we proposed TMSiOH as a potential marker for incinerator plume and landfill emissions, which may provide important assistance in identifying pollution sources.