scholarly journals Air Pollution Associated with Total Suspended Particulate and Particulate Matter in Cement Grinding Plant in Vietnam

Atmosphere ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1707
Author(s):  
Tinh Thai ◽  
Ales Bernatik ◽  
Petr Kučera

Air pollution associated with suspended particles has become a significant concern in Vietnam recently. The study aimed to (1) investigate dust sources; (2) measure concentration levels of Total Suspended Particulate (TSP), Particulate Matter (PM) fractions; (3) identify silica levels and the correlation with respirable particles at a cement grinding plant in Vietnam. A total of 312 samples (52 TSP, 160 PMs) at 13 processes were measured using the direct-reading dust meter. The silica composition was analyzed in a certified laboratory using the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) technique. SPSS version 26 for Window was used to analyze the data. The operations of the cement grinding plant created multiple dust sources from the jetty to the cement dispatch process. The TSP levels ranged 0.06–38.24 mg m−3, and 40.38 % (n = 21) TSP samples exceeded the Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for an 8-h working shift. Besides that, there was a wide range and significant concentration levels of PMs in the cement processes. The levels of PMs were PM1 (0.00–0.06 mg m−3), PM2.5 (0.01–0.83 mg m−3), PM4 (0.02–4.59 mg m−3), PM7 (0.03–16.94 mg m−3), and PM10 (0.04–26.85 mg m−3). The highest mean levels of PMs factions were measured at the pre-grinding process. The inefficient operation of the dust collector contributed a significant factor to the dust dispersion in this process. The silica’s mean (SD) composition in respirable dust was 20.4 % (0.86) and was not significantly different amongst the processes. There was a significant correlation between the levels of respirable dust and silica exposure in the cement grinding plant (r = 0.99). The improvement of indoor air quality is needed to prevent health effects on cement workers.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivo Suter ◽  
Lukas Emmenegger ◽  
Dominik Brunner

<p>Reducing air pollution, which is the world's largest single environmental health risk, demands better-informed air quality policies. Consequently, multi-scale air quality models are being developed with the goal to resolve cities. One of the major challenges in such model systems is to accurately represent all large- and regional-scale processes that may critically determine the background concentration levels over a given city. This is particularly true for longer-lived species such as aerosols, for which background levels often dominate the concentration levels, even within the city. Furthermore, the heterogeneous local emissions, and complex dispersion in the city have to be considered carefully.</p><p>In this study, the impact of processes across a wide range of scales on background concentrations over Switzerland and the city of Zurich was modelled by performing one year of nested European and Swiss national COSMO-ART simulations to obtain adequate boundary conditions for gas-phase chemical, aerosol and meteorological conditions for city-resolving simulations. The regional climate chemistry model COSMO-ART (Vogel et al. 2009) was used in a 1-way coupled mode. The outer, European, domain, which was driven by chemical boundary conditions from the global MOZART model, had a 6.6 km horizontal resolution and the inner, Swiss, domain one of 2.2 km. For the city scale, a catalogue of more than 1000 mesoscale flow patterns with 100 m resolution was created with the model GRAMM, based on a discrete set of atmospheric stabilities, wind speeds and directions, accounting for the influence of land-use and topography. Finally, the flow around buildings was solved with the CFD model GRAL forced at the boundaries by GRAMM. Subsequently, Lagrangian dispersion simulations for a set of air pollutants and emission sectors (traffic, industry, ...) based on extremely detailed building and emission data was performed in GRAL. The result of this nested procedure is a library of 3-dimensional air pollution maps representative of hourly situations in Zurich (Berchet et al. 2017). From these pre-computed situations, time-series and concentration maps can be obtained by selecting situations according to observed or modelled meteorological conditions.</p><p>The results were compared to measurements from air quality monitoring network stations. Modelled concentrations of NO<sub>x</sub> and PM compared well to measurements across multiple locations, provided background conditions were considered carefully. The nested multi-scale modelling system COSMO-ART/GRAMM/GRAL can adequately reproduce local air quality and help understanding the relative contributions of local versus distant emissions, as well as fill the space between precise point measurements from monitoring sites. This information is useful for research, policy-making, and epidemiological studies particularly under the assumption that exceedingly high concentrations become more and more localised phenomenon in the future.</p>


2015 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
MN Mondol ◽  
M Khaled ◽  
AS Chamon ◽  
SM Ullah

Aerosol particulate matter and trace gases were sampled at five locations in the city areas of Bangladesh. The sampling sites were selected in the city areas near motor vehicles run with heavy traffic. The average concentrations of total suspended particulate matter in city ambient air were 413.02, 292.63, 671.65, 184.09 and 301.13 ?g m-³ in Dhaka, Noakhali, Chittagong, Faridpur and Kustia, respectively, which were higher than the daily average value, given by WHO and US EPA standard. The highest SPM concentration is in Chittagong (671.65 ?g m-³) and the lowest in Faridpur (184.09 ?g m-³). The city areas studied fall in the ‘Unhealthy” to “Extremely Unhealthy’ class according to the Air Quality Index, 2003. Trace metal concentrations of total suspended particulate matter in city ambient air were analyzed. The reported previous Pb concentration in farmgate, Dhaka was 1238 ng m-3 by Biswas et al., (2003) and now shows a decreasing tendency, presumably due to the ban on the use of leaded fuel. The average results of trace metals have been compared to national and international standards. The Cu and Zn concentration of current study is found very high in comparison with other previously reported results. The air of Chittagong city is highly polluted. Motor vehicles, especially two stroke engine vehicles are increasingly major sources of air pollution in Chittagong. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjsir.v49i4.22630 Bangladesh J. Sci. Ind. Res. 49(4), 263-270, 2014


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document