2-D Numerical Multimedia Environmental Analysis System (NMEAS) for pollution and risk assessment

Abstract

All pollution issues involve potential impacts on the surrounding interconnected air, water, and soil (i.e., multimedia) environment. Effectively addressing a wide range of multimedia pollution problems is of crucial importance to major socioeconomic sectors. This study presents an attempt to develop a new Numerical Multimedia Environmental Analysis System (NMEAS), which incorporates numerical analyses of pollutants fate and transport in the multimedia environment. Specifically, three different approaches were evaluated for solving two dimensional coupled pollutants advection–diffusion–reaction equations using experimental data from the literature: (a) NMEAS/FEM (numerical finite element method); (b) NMEAS/FDM (numerical finite difference method); and, (c) NMEAS/analytical method. Preliminary validation of the proposed NMEAS method has been conducted through a 2-D case study. In the case study implementing the NMEAS/FEM solution is found to be better than that of NMEAS/FDM, especially at low concentrations of pollutants; and both pollutant fluxes across and distribution in the interconnected compartments are simulated in both numerical spatial and temporal scale for complex multimedia environment. The new NMEAS will be an innovative risk assessment tool aiming to formulate effective strategies of managing environmental impacts on multiple compartments resulting from pollution emissions.