Abstract
A major application of air pollution dispersion models is to aid in the selection of abatement plans. Present technology dictates that air pollution abatement be a result of altering an area's emission characteristics. The need for pollution abatement is most acute during air pollution episodes. This study is an investigation of how air quality in a hypothetical city is affected by the city's emission characteristics during a simulated air pollution episode. Emission characteristics examined include configuration of sources, diurnal emission rate schedules, total emission rates, and the combination of point and area sources. Results are used to gain insight into how models may be used to reduce air pollution emergencies through long term planning and short term abatement schemes. Among the observations are: 1. (1) air quality is improved significantly by selecting configurations whose major sources are too far apart to jointly contaminate a locality. Increasing the mean distance between major sources 75 per cent led to an improvement in air quality as high as 28 per cent; 2. (2) altering diurnal schedules of emission rates to take advantage of diurnal variations in atmospheric dilutive capacity improved air quality by as much as 23 per cent; 3. (3) the set of priorities given to emission rate reductions of different types of sources is an important determinant of air quality improvement attained with a given reduction in the total emission rate. Differences as high as 28 per cent were observed for a given reduction in the total emission rate; 4. (4) pollutant concentration at a receptor location is primarily the result of emissions in contiguous locations; 5. (5) longer time lags between emission rate reductions and air quality improvement during episodes place a premium on controls which can be implemented quickly. The model is verified using St. Louis emission data. Predicted concentrations are within a factor of 1.4 of observed ones.
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