Tri-generation power plant and conventional boilers: pollutant flow rate and atmospheric impact of stack emissions

Abstract

The atmospheric impact of stack emissions from a power plant (tri-generator and boilers) that will be installed in an urban area in the central Po valley (Northern Italy), characterized by calm wind events, is studied and compared with the impact of the existing plant (conventional boilers). Both the plants are supplied by methane gas. The atmospheric dispersion of NO x emitted is simulated, both in the current and future scenario, by the software package ARIA INDUSTRY. The NO x emission rates are set equal to the regulatory emission limits for existing and future boilers, while the tri-generation system emission rates are set equal to the emission limits certified by the system manufacturer. The simulation periods focus over the 2010 winter season. The simulation estimates the impact of NO x emissions on air quality (vertical concentration profiles and concentration maps at the ground) in the urban area close to the plant. The future power plant impact on air quality results lower than the impact of the existing plant, even if the yearly total mass of pollutants emitted in atmosphere from the new power plant is higher than from the existing plant. The emissions of conventional boilers result the main responsible of the air pollution at the ground in the future scenario.

Pesticide exposure assessed through agricultural crop proximity and risk of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

“…This measure is premised on the evidence that direct pesticide drift and the aerial volatilization and spreading of these compounds following their applications in fields leads to residential exposure. The aerial transport of a pollutant from its source to a point of exposition is usually assessed using atmospheric dispersion models [ 41 , 42 ]. However, in the present study the complexity of the sources (hundreds of fields with pesticides emission rate not quantifiable) prevented the use of such models.…”

Impact Assessment of Pollutant Emissions in the Atmosphere from a Power Plant over a Complex Terrain and under Unsteady Winds

“…The model operates in non-stationary conditions by approximating temporal variations in successive stationary states. SPRAY gives highly reliable simulations of pollutant dispersion close to the release source point [30,31], and it is able to simulate deposition-decay phenomena. SPRAY supplies a three-dimensional concentration field, vertically subdivided into grid cells at different terrain-following layers, and vertically stretched to obtain higher resolution near the ground.…”

Towards the coupling of a chemical transport model with a micro-scale Lagrangian modelling system for evaluation of urban NOx levels in a European hotspot

“…However, all these techniques need a large number of in-situ observations at strategic locations to represent the full spatial and temporal pollutant variability and cannot be used to take into account turbulent atmospheric dispersion. To meet this need, a variety of micro (Moussafir et al, 2004(Moussafir et al, , Öttl, 2015 and local (Tinarelli et al, 1992, Bellasio and Bianconi, 2012, Cimorelli et al, 2004 scale air dispersion models have been developed in the last few years, as they can provide a high-resolution information on air pollution level within urban city area by taking into account space-time emissions distribution and local meteorological characteristics (Ghermandi et al, 2014, Ghermandi et al, 2015.…”