scholarly journals The impact of road transport emissions on air quality in Brăila, Romania

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Carmelia Mariana Dragomir Balanica ◽  
Ciprian Cuzmin ◽  
Cecilia Serban ◽  
Cristian Muntenita

Road transport, including accessibility and individual mobility is considered unanimously as a fundamental element of contemporary living. The study area is considering Braila County with a total population of around over 305,000. The area it is well served by 6 national roads, 27 county roads and 42 communal roads and contains some of the most heavily trafficked stretches of road in the Romania. The emissions analysed in this study CH4, CO, CO2, N2O, NH3, NOx, PM2.5 and PM10, were collected by the Agency for Environmental Protection Braila during 2015-2019 based on questionnaires according to EMEP/EEA air pollutant emission inventory guidebook. The highest level of pollutant emissions was recorded in 2017, more exactly 191714,5 Megatons. In this article we analysed five categories of pollution sources: Passenger car, Light commercial trucks, Heavy-duty vehicles, Motorcycles and Non - Road vehicles and other mobile equipment. With the exception of CO2, N2O and NH3, pollutant emissions decreased for the eight pollutants analysed.

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 695
Author(s):  
Marek Bogacki ◽  
Robert Oleniacz ◽  
Mateusz Rzeszutek ◽  
Paulina Bździuch ◽  
Adriana Szulecka ◽  
...  

One of the elements of strategy aimed at minimizing the impact of road transport on air quality is the introduction of its reorganization resulting in decreased pollutant emissions to the air. The aim of the study was to determine the optimal strategy of corrective actions in terms of the air pollutant emissions from road transport. The study presents the assessment results of the emission reduction degree of selected pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, and NOx) as well as the impact evaluation of this reduction on their concentrations in the air for adopted scenarios of the road management changes for one of the street canyons in Krakow (Southern Poland). Three scenarios under consideration of the city authorities were assessed: narrowing the cross-section of the street by eliminating one lane in both directions, limiting the maximum speed from 70 km/h to 50 km/h, and allowing only passenger and light commercial vehicles on the streets that meet the Euro 4 standard or higher. The best effects were obtained for the variant assuming banning of vehicles failing to meet the specified Euro standard. It would result in a decrease of the yearly averaged PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by about 8–9% and for NOx by almost 30%.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel David Oreggioni ◽  
Fabio Monforti-Ferraio ◽  
Monica Crippa ◽  
Edwin Schaaf ◽  
Diego Guizzardi ◽  
...  

<p>During the last 30 years, the global energy sector has undergone through significant transformation, delivering a considerably larger electricity output whilst attempting to reduce air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. The international community has tackled this challenging dilemma by implementing different kind of policies and by encouraging several types of technological changes; including the partial replacement of coal and liquid fossil fuels by low carbon energy vectors (natural gas and renewable sources), the incorporation of more efficient power trains (natural gas fired combined cycles and supercritical coal fired plants) and the deployment of primary and secondary treatment processes for limiting air pollutant concentration in flue gases.<br>EDGAR is a unique global emission database due to its high sectorial, technological and geographical coverage; reporting greenhouse and air pollutant emission time series (1970-nowadays) in a very detailed way. Research is currently being conducted, aimed at updating the energy conversion and end of pipe processes so that the quantified emissions can better reflect the latest global and regional changes. By using EDGAR new data, it is possible to evaluate the impact of technology and regulatory frameworks on air pollutant emissions as well as to identify possible co-benefits and trade off associated with climate change mitigation policies for the energy industries.<br>This work is intended to study the drivers for greenhouse and air pollutant emission trends within this sector - both in large emitting developed and developing economies; by focusing on the role of  demand increase, on the penetration of non-fossil sources and specially on the incorporation of more efficient power islands, combustion and air pollutant abatement units.</p>


Energy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121724
Author(s):  
Geng Liu ◽  
Shida Sun ◽  
Chao Zou ◽  
Bo Wang ◽  
Lin Wu ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Liu ◽  
Dan Tong ◽  
Yixuan Zheng ◽  
Jing Cheng ◽  
Xinying Qin ◽  
...  

Abstract. China is the largest cement producer and consumer in the world. Cement manufacturing is highly energy-intensive, and is one of the major contributors to carbon dioxide (CO2) and air pollutant emissions, which threatens climate mitigation and air quality improvement. In this study, we investigated the decadal changes of carbon dioxide and air pollutant emissions for the period of 1990–2015, based on intensive unit-based information on activity rates, production capacity, operation status, and control technologies, which improved the accuracy of the cement emissions in China. We found that, from 1990 to 2015, accompanied by a 10.9-fold increase in cement production, CO2, SO2, and NOx emissions from China's cement industry increased by 626 %, 59 %, and 658 %, whereas CO, PM2.5 and PM10 emissions decreased by 9 %, 66 %, and 63 %, respectively. In the 1990s, driven by the rapid growth of cement production, CO2 and air pollutant emissions increased constantly. Then, the production technology innovation of replacing traditional shaft kilns with the new precalciner kilns in the 2000s markedly reduced SO2, CO and PM emissions from the cement industry. Since 2010, the growing trend of emissions has been further curbed by a combination of measures, including promoting large-scale precalciner production lines and phasing out small ones, upgrading emission standards, installing low-NOx burners (LNB) and selective noncatalytic reduction (SNCR) to reduce NOx emissions, as well as adopting more advanced particulate matter control technologies. Our study highlighted the effectiveness of advanced technologies on air pollutant emission control, however, CO2 emissions from China's cement industry kept growing throughout the period, posing challenges to future carbon emission mitigation in China.


Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1604
Author(s):  
Tao Zhu ◽  
Furong Li ◽  
Wenfeng Niu ◽  
Zijun Gao ◽  
Yiwei Han ◽  
...  

Monitoring of toxic and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) in a petrochemical company in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of China to assess the impact of HAPs on the health risks of workers in the petrochemical company. The samples were tested by solid-phase adsorption thermal desorption/gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HJ734-2014), and the pollutant emission list was obtained. According to the pollutant emission inventory, it can be seen that benzene, toluene and xylene are the main components of toxic and harmful air pollutants emitted by the petrochemical enterprise. The method of combining actual monitoring and CALPUFF model prediction was used to evaluate the impact of the toxic and harmful air pollutants emitted by the enterprise on the health of workers. The risk characterization results show that when benzene is the maximum concentration value predicted by the model, it will pose a carcinogenic risk to the factory workers. Therefore, based on the results of this study, it is recommended not to allow residents to live within the predicted concentration range of the model. The results of this study can enable China’s oil refining industry to better understand the characteristics of pollutant emissions from petrochemical companies in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. Moreover, the results of this study can be used as a policy basis for improving the health of workers in petrochemical enterprises, and are of great significance to the protection of public health.


Author(s):  
Sehee Han ◽  
Seunguk Na ◽  
Nam-Gi Lim

Since the life cycle of a building spans more than 50 years, studies of the environmental impacts in the construction industry have focused on reducing the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions during the operation and maintenance phase. The products of the construction industry are assembled using various building materials manufactured outside of the construction site. Consequently, it is essential that the manufactured building materials be transported to the construction site using various types of transportation methods. However, there is a lack of studies that assess the pollutant emissions of road transport while executing a construction project. The purpose of this study is to investigate the changes in the road pollutant emissions when the old diesel vehicles for transporting building materials are replaced according to enhanced pollutant emission regulations. In this study, we found that approximately 89, 64, 77, and 64% of NOx, VOC, PM, and CO, respectively, were emitted during transportation of building materials as a proportion of the emissions during the construction of the structure. The analyzed results also show that about 10, 35, 23, and 35% of NOx, VOC, PM, and CO, respectively, were generated from material transportation as a proportion of the emissions from finishing the work. It is expected that a reduction in pollutant emissions from transporting building materials of up to approximately 64, 39, 49, and 27% of NOx, VOC, PM, and CO, respectively, can be achieved when vehicles registered before 2003 are replaced with ones that adhere to the tightened regulations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 044018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia T Keyes ◽  
Kathleen F Lambert ◽  
Dallas Burtraw ◽  
Jonathan J Buonocore ◽  
Jonathan I Levy ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Tianliang Zhao ◽  
Sunling Gong ◽  
Shaofei Kong ◽  
Lili Tang ◽  
...  

Abstract. Air pollutant emissions play a determinant role in deteriorating air quality. However, an uncertainty in emission inventories is still the key problem for modeling air pollution. In this study, an updated emission inventory of coal-fired power plants (UEIPP) based on online monitoring data in Jiangsu province of East China for the year of 2012 was implemented in the widely used Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC). By employing the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem), two simulations were executed to assess the atmospheric environmental change by using the original MEIC emission inventory and the MEIC inventory with the UEIPP. A synthetic analysis shows that (1) compared to the power emissions of MEIC, PM2.5, PM10, SO2 and NOx were lower, and CO, black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and NMVOCs were higher in the UEIPP, reflecting a large discrepancy in the power emissions over East China; (2) In accordance with the changes of UEIPP, the modeled concentrations were reduced for SO2 and NO2, and increased for most areas of primary OC, BC and CO, whose concentrations in atmosphere are highly dependent on emission changes. (3) Interestingly, when the UEIPP was used, the atmospheric oxidizing capacity significantly reinforced, reflecting by increased oxidizing agents, e.g. O3 and OH, thus directly strengthened the chemical production from SO2 and NOx to sulfate and nitrate, which offset the reduction of primary PM2.5 emissions especially in the haze days. This study indicated the importance of updating air pollutant emission inventories in simulating the complex atmospheric environment changes with the implications on air quality and environmental changes.


Atmosphere ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haitao Dai ◽  
Dawei Ma ◽  
Renbin Zhu ◽  
Bowen Sun ◽  
Jun He

Anhui is one of the highest provincial emitters of air pollutants in China due to its large coal consumption in coal-fired plants. In this study, the total emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and particulate matter (PM) from coal-fired power plants in Anhui were investigated to assess the impact of control measures on the atmospheric emissions based upon continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS). The total NOx, SO2 and PM emissions significantly decreased from 2013 to 2017 and they were estimated at 24.5 kt, 14.8 kt and 3.0 kt in 2017, respectively. The emission reductions of approximately 79.0%, 70.1% and 81.2% were achieved in 2017 compared with a 2013 baseline, respectively, due to the application of high-efficiency emission control measures, including the desulfurization, denitration and dust-removing devices and selective catalytic reduction (SCR). The NOx, SO2 and PM emission intensities were 0.125 g kWh−1, 0.076 g kWh−1 and 0.015 g kWh−1 in 2017, respectively, which were lower than the average of national coal-fired units. The coal-fired units with ≥600 MW generated 80.6% of the total electricity amount while they were estimated to account for 70.5% of total NOx, 70.1% of total SO2 and 71.9% of total PM. Their seasonal emissions showed a significant correlation to the power generation with the maximum correlation found in summer (July and August) and winter (January and December). The major regional contributors are the cities along the Huai River Basin and Yangtze River Basin, such as Huainan, Huaibei, Tongling, Maanshan and Wuhu, and the highest emission occurred in Huainan, accounting for approximately 26–40% of total emission from all the power plants. Our results indicated that the application of desulfurization, denitration and dust-removing devices has played an important role in controlling air pollutant emissions from coal-fired power plants.


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