Air Pollution and Economic Impact from Ships Operating in the Port of Varna

Abstract

The present work develops a multidisciplinary approach for evaluating the air pollution and economic impact from ships operating in the port of Varna. The work collects and analyses automatic identification system (AIS) data of the arriving and queuing dry cargo ships in the seaport of Varna in identifying the statistical descriptors of the length of the ships, gross tonnage (GT), and ship engine power. The queueing theory (QT) is employed to analyse the ship operations in a single queue and is processed by three parallel terminals, satisfying the port regulations. The Gaussian dispersion model (GDM) is adopted to predict the pollution concentration from ships arriving at the seaport, queuing, approaching, waiting, processing at the berth, and departing. The gas emission is estimated as a function of the ship movement trajectory, and the time duration at any stage is defined by QT for the most critical surrounding areas, considering the wind speed, as well as horizontal and vertical dispersion as a function of the location of the ship, accounting for the effective emission height, weather conditions, and speed. To mitigate the potential impact on health, the gas emissions of oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and air-borne particles (PM10) generated by ships during the queuing and port operation are evaluated. Potential cleaning measures for any ship are implemented to satisfy the maximum allowable concentrations (MAC) in surrounding areas. The implemented ship pollution cleaning measures and overall ship and terminal operating costs are minimised to identify the most efficient berth operation. The developed approach is flexible and can be used for any particular conditions for ships operating in ports.