A three-dimensional dispersion air pollution model for point, line or area sources is considered in a limited region. Particular solutions of such model and their respective maximum values are used to pose a quadratic programming problem with the aim to determine optimal emission rates of the sources and meet the standards of air quality at every point in a zone and each instant in an interval of time. The existence and uniqueness of the optimal control problem solution is proved. An efficient algorithm of successive orthogonal projections is used to calculate the optimal solution. Numerical examples obtained in the case of point sources demonstrate the method's ability.