Abstract
Exposure to atmospheric pollution is a major concern for urban populations. Currently, no effective strategy has been adopted to tackle the problem. The paper presents the Smart Clean Air City project, a pilot experiment concerning the improvement in urban air quality. Small wet scrubber systems will be operating in a network configuration in suitable urban areas of L’Aquila city (Italy). The purpose of this work is to describe the project and show the preliminary results obtained in the characterization of two urban sites before the remediation test; the main operating principles of the wet scrubber system will be discussed, as well as the design of the mobile treatment plant for the processing of wastewater resulting from scrubber operation. Measurements of particle size distributions in the range of 0.30–25 µm took place in the two sites of interest, an urban background and a traffic area in the city of L’Aquila. The mean number concentration detected was 2.4 × 107 and 4.5 × 107 particles/m3, respectively. Finally, theoretical assessments, performed by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes, will show the effects of the wet scrubber operation on air pollutants under different environmental conditions and in several urban usage patterns.
Highlights
In the last century, human activities have caused the huge increase in atmospheric emissions, mainly due to industrial, commercial and agriculture development, as well as the expansion of urban areas and transportation
(Computational Fluid Dynamics) theoretical assessments have been performed in order to investigate how the scrubber operation affects the pollutant levels in several urban contexts; in operation affects the pollutant levels in several urban contexts; in particular, we focused our attention particular, we focused our attention on the deep street canyon case
The Smart Clean Air City project is aimed at improving the urban air quality through the use of APA technology
Summary
Human activities have caused the huge increase in atmospheric emissions, mainly due to industrial, commercial and agriculture development, as well as the expansion of urban areas and transportation. Road transportation and heating systems are two main urban sources of atmospheric emissions. Around urban areas and suburbs, there is a significant contribution to the emissions from industry, farming and agriculture operations [2]. Urban atmospheric pollution is the result of a mixture of different chemical compounds and particulate matter [2]. The main pollutants in urban air are nitrogen oxides (NOx ), sulphur oxides (SOx ), particulate matter (PM1 –PM10 ), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), heavy metals, carbon oxides (CO, CO2 ), light hydrocarbons (CH4 , C6 H6 ) and other compounds like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), attached to particulate matter
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