Industrial point source CO2 emission strength estimation with aircraft measurements and dispersion modelling

Abstract

CO2 remains the greenhouse gas that contributes most to anthropogenic global warming, and the evaluation of its emissions is of major interest to both research and regulatory purposes. Emission inventories generally provide quite reliable estimates of CO2 emissions. However, because of intrinsic uncertainties associated with these estimates, it is of great importance to validate emission inventories against independent estimates. This paper describes an integrated approach combining aircraft measurements and a puff dispersion modelling framework by considering a CO2 industrial point source, located in Biganos, France. CO2 density measurements were obtained by applying the mass balance method, while CO2 emission estimates were derived by implementing the CALMET/CALPUFF model chain. For the latter, three meteorological initializations were used: (i) WRF-modelled outputs initialized by ECMWF reanalyses; (ii) WRF-modelled outputs initialized by CFSR reanalyses and (iii) local in situ observations. Governmental inventorial data were used as reference for all applications. The strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches and how they affect emission estimation uncertainty were investigated. The mass balance based on aircraft measurements was quite succesful in capturing the point source emission strength (at worst with a 16% bias), while the accuracy of the dispersion modelling, markedly when using ECMWF initialization through the WRF model, was only slightly lower (estimation with an 18% bias). The analysis will help in highlighting some methodological best practices that can be used as guidelines for future experiments.

Common Analysis Methods for Gaseous and Solidcontaminants Emitted From Different Pollutionsources: A Review Paper

“…The study was limited to comparing the approaches used with API without generating risk or forecast maps to determine pollution. Carotenuto et al (2018) employed two methods to analyse the intensity of CO 2 emissions from an industrial point source in Biganos, France. The first one was a mass balance method based on aircraft observed data, and the second was a dispersion simulation approach incorporating the CALMET diagnostic meteorological model and the CALPUFF puff dispersion model.…”

Investigating the Uncertainties Propagation Analysis of CO2 Emissions Gridded Maps at the Urban Scale: A Case Study of Jinjiang City, China

“…Furthermore, inventory comparison analysis is impossible at the urban scale due to the lack of a detailed emission inventory. The studies developed different uncertainty metrics and tools such as PDFs, the bootstrap sampling method, fuzzy mathematics, the 95% Cis, and relative uncertainty [54][55][56][57], which could provide the reference for our workflow. Moreover, some studies which retrieved CO 2 emissions using atmospheric models used data assimilation technologies in an attempt to estimate and reduce the uncertainty in CO 2 emissions [53,58].…”

Health risk assessment of engine exhaust emissions within Australian ports: a case study of Port of Brisbane

“…Some studies offer an algorithm available in CALPUFF, a new model for regulating dispersion, which might calculate concentrations with high precision by accounting for upwind meandering near a source (Barclay and Borissova 2013). However, CALPUFF cannot offer reliable near-field concentration measurements from sources responsible for modern emissions if plume spreads are measured using estimates of turbulent velocities near to sources (Carotenuto et al 2018). This study, designed to formulate a refined modeling perspective for near field application for regulation, used a case study approach, and the evaluation of its result showed a corresponding agreement with the literature.…”