Modeling of air pollutant concentrations in an industrial region of Turkey

Abstract

The hourly SO and PM concentrations in ambient air of the Kutahya city located at the western part of Turkey have exceeded the air quality limits in winter months since several years. The region has major industrial plants including lignite-fired power plants and open-cast mining activities, residential areas, and traffic sources. To obtain and quantify the sector-wise anthropogenic emissions and spatial distribution of the major pollutants including SO, NO , PM, and CO, a comprehensive emission inventory with 1-km spatial resolution was prepared for the year of 2014, and the AERMOD dispersion model was used to predict ambient air concentrations in a domain of 140 km by 110 km. Validation of the model results was also done referring to in situ routine measurements at two monitoring stations located in the study area. Total emissions of SO, PM, NO , and CO in the study area were calculated as 64,399, 9770, 24,627, and 29,198 tons/year, respectively. The results showed that industrial plants were the largest sources of SO, NO , and PM emissions, while residential heating and road traffic were the most contributing sectors for CO emissions. Three major power plants in the region with total annual lignite consumption of 10 million tons per year were main sources of high SO concentrations, while high PM concentrations mainly originated from two major open-cast lignite mines. Major contributors of high NO and CO concentrations were traffic including highways and urban streets, and residential heating with high lignite consumption in urban areas. Results of the dispersion model run with the emission inventory resulted in partially high index of agreement (0.75) with SO measured in the urban station within the modeled area.

Urban scale air quality analysis due to coal-based residential heating

“…In addition to the national regulation, long-time scale such as monthly or annual period Fig. 9 The periodic-monthly SO 2 dispersions over the downtown have been previously used for ambient SO 2 modeling studies (Zou et al 2010;Sari and Bayram 2013;Tuygun et al 2017). Zou et al (2010) and Gibson et al (2013) also concluded that SO 2 modeling results based on long-time scales provide more reliable results than momentarily shorter time scales.…”

Influence of Meteorological Parameters on Air Quality and Other Pollutants in Duhok City, Iraq

“…In Kermanshah (Iran), researchers studied the relationship between weather conditions and air pollution with the increased number of emergencies involving ward admissions of asthmatic patient in Kermanshah hospitals (30). Recently, to predict ambient air concentrations in an industrial region of Turkey (namely, the city of Kutahya) the AERMOD dispersion model was used (37). Heavy metals are considered conservative pollutants because they tend to bioaccumulate in tissues over a period of time.…”

Trade-offs in the process of enrichment of tree plantations in sanitary protection zones of enterprises regarding the peculiarities of potential accumulation of toxicants in the leaves of trees

“…Industrial processes are regarded as the main contributor to air pollution. Harmful pollutants that originate from the aforementioned sources include sulfur oxides [7][8][9] carbon oxides, fluorine, phenolic compounds, nitrogen oxides etc. [10,11].…”