An Estimation on Overall Emission Rate of Fugitive Dust Emitted from Road Construction Activity

Abstract

Road construction is a typical example of construction activities with high emissions of fugitive dust that may have substantial temporary impact on ambient air quality. From the point of view on overall road construction process, an approach using inverse modeling based on measuring total suspended participates (TSP) would be worthwhile to develop for estimation of the emission amount of fugitive dust. This paper studies a comprehensively empirical framework to estimate the overall emission rate of fugitive dust for a surface road construction. A series of field experiments were carried out to measure TSP by a high-volume air sampler for individual phases of road construction activities. Finally, correlated with the effect of an annual average of wind speed and precipitation in the Taiwan area, a useful equation was proposed to estimate the overall emission rate based on activity area and construction period for a surface road construction activity without dust prevention or control. Key words: Fugitive dust; emission factor; total suspended particulates; road construction