Atmospheric dispersion modeling of CO2 emissions from a cement plant’s sources

Abstract

The study aims to estimate a cement plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations from individual sources as well as combined emissions from all the sources. Four main CO2 emission sources were considered: process from the calcination of limestone, the combustion of fossil fuel in the kilns, the power plant, and the dump trucks used for raw material transportation. An integrated modeling system comprised of the California PUFF and Weather Research and Forecasting was applied. The power plant and the stacks of three kilns were modeled as point sources, whereas the vehicular emissions were treated as a line source. In the first part of the study, modeling of the cement plant’s individual sources was carried out to predict CO2 at each receptor of the domain. In the second part, the CO2 concentrations of combined emissions from all of the plant’s sources were predicted. Individual modeling of each of the plant’s CO2 emission sources showed that the highest CO2 at each receptor of the domain resulted from the calcination process. In the case of combined modeling of all the cement plant’s sources, the predicted peak concentrations of CO2 were 357.19 and 36.11 mg/m3 for one-hour and 24-hour averaging periods, respectively.