Characteristics of using layered double hydroxides to reduce the VOCs from bituminous materials

•The VOCs emission speed and amount can be characterized by ion current intensity.•Temperature only has significant influence on the emission of smaller VOC molecules.•4 wt% of LDH has the best emission reduction effect of VOCs from bitumen.•A decrease of 40–60% in VOC emissions can be achieved when LDHs was properly added.

Various types of molecules in the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from bituminous materials were detected and analyzed by means of thermogravimetric-mass spectrometry (TG-MS) analysis. The effect of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) additives as VOCs inhibitor was also studied. The ion histogram of volatile components from bituminous binder was obtained through TG-MS analysis. Analysis results show that the environmental temperature has significant influence only on the volatile characteristics of smaller molecules in the pure bituminous binder. The effect of environmental temperature has been found marginal for the volatile speed of bigger molecules and LDHs modified bitumen binder.The obtained results regarding the pure bitumen and LDHs-modified bitumen demonstrate that LDHs modifiers have the potential to reduce VOC emissions. The reduction effect on different molecules or components varies. For smaller molecules, this effect on volatile speed is significant. LDHs affect the volatile speed of more carcinogenic volatile components to reduce more significantly for dichloroethane and naphthalene, compared with normal octane. The study findings indicate that a LDH percentage of 4% is an optimum for achieving the best emission reduction effect of VOCs for the selected binder, which is 40–60% percent reduction in VOCs.

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