Background
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the major components in air pollutants, which are organic compounds with the boiling points in the range of 50-260 8C at room temperature and atmospheric pressure of 133.322 Pa. VOC pollutants can come from indoor and outdoor sources. Indoor VOCs pollution often originates from household products such as office supplies, insulating materials, cleaning products, and pressed woods, and so on; On the other hand, outdoor VOCs pollution is mainly from emissions of industrial processes and automobile exhausts. VOCs are recognized as major contributors to air pollution because of their toxicity to human health and their involvement in the formation of photochemical smog.
The conventional approach for treatment of high concentration VOC streams is thermal incineration, but incineration has high operating costs, as temperatures exceeding 800-1200 8C are required to achieve complete VOC destruction. Incomplete, or poorly controlled combustion process produces undesirable byproducts such as dioxins and nitrogen oxides in the incinerator flue gas. Several alternative VOC removal technologies are available and each technology has practical limitations for different organic compounds, concentrations, and emission