EDGAR v5.0: a tool to evaluate the influence of technology incorporation and regulatory frameworks on global greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions.

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>

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.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 2244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danilo Arcentales ◽  
Carla Silva

In Europe, diesel combustion is being banned due to the NOx and PM2.5 emissions impact on air quality. The bus sector is being electrified and is increasing its use of alternative fuels, such as natural gas (in spark ignition engines) and bioethanol (in compression ignition engines), to reduce such harmful emissions. Even if a diesel bus is equipped with selective catalytic reduction (SCR), its NOx emissions are reduced its but produces more NH3 emissions that are PM2.5 precursors. In developing countries, the air quality is still barely monitored, however, the air quality issue is well known and is being addressed. Moreover, the Ecuadorian sugar cane industry is seeking ways to increase its ethanol production. This is the ideal framework to explore a new technology and energy source in developing economies such as Ecuador. This paper explores the impact of the Ecuadorian diesel bus fleet conversion to hybrid compression ignition ethanol (HEV-ED95), hybrid diesel and plug-in hybrid flex-fuel using electricity and internal combustion engine ICE-E20 and ICE-E100. The impacts are measured in terms of final energy consumption, criteria pollutant emissions (NH3, NOx, PM2.5) and 100 years global warming potential in a well-to-wheels framework. For the tank-to-wheels data the method follows the typical values of conversion efficiency from final to useful energy (cross checked with a microsimulation model), the Tier 2 European Environmental Agency approach combined with ethanol influence on compression ratio, lower heating value, criteria emissions taken from a literature review, and well-to-tank emission factors for electricity (10–58% thermal natural gas or coal powerplant contribution), for ethanol from banana industry wastes (ED95, E20 and E100), gasoline and diesel from US databases. A discussion on whether sugarcane biorefineries are necessary is highlighted in the results. All input parameters have an uncertainty range between a minimum and a maximum and the probability for each is giving by a uniform distribution.


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):  
Junfei Chen ◽  
Tonghui Ding ◽  
Ming Li ◽  
Huimin Wang

Water, energy, and food, as the basic material resources of human production and life, play a prominent role in social and economic development. As the imbalance between the supply and demand of water, energy, and food increases, a highly sensitive and fragile relationship gradually forms among water, energy, and food. In this paper, Inner Mongolia in China is selected as a research area. Firstly, synergy theory is applied to establish the framework of a water–energy–food system. Then, a multi-objective programming model is constructed, where the objective functions are defined to minimize the integrated deviation degree and pollutant emissions of the water–energy–food system. Meanwhile, maximization of the water benefit, energy production, and food production is also considered. In addition, the model takes economy, environment, water, energy, and food as constraints. Finally, a genetic algorithm is designed for accurately assessing the most promising results. The results show that the cooperation degree of the water–energy–food system in Inner Mongolia is getting better and better, and the pollutant emission from the water–energy–food system is decreasing. In 2020, the proportion of agricultural water consumption fell by 1%, while that of industrial water consumption rose by 0.48%. The production of coal, natural gas, and power are all showing an increasing trend. Among them, the increase of natural gas production is as high as 38,947,730 tons of standard coal. However, the proportions of coal, natural gas, and power change inconsistently, where the proportions of coal and natural gas increase while that of power decreases. Corn production accounts for more than 80% of the total, which is in the eldest brother position in the food industry structure. Besides, there are differences between the planned values and optimal values of decision variables. Finally, suggestions are put forward to improve the sustainable development of water–energy–food in Inner Mongolia.


Author(s):  
John Sartain ◽  
Don Newburry ◽  
Mikko Pitkanen ◽  
Markku Ikonen

Emissions regulations on stationary, natural gas fired reciprocating engines are becoming increasingly tighter throughout the United States. In addition to lower NOx, CO and hydrocarbon limits, regulation of HAP (Hazardous Air Pollutant) emissions has become more prevalent. Rich burn (stoichiometric) natural gas engines are widely used in the oil and gas industry, as well as in distributed power generation. Due to the low oxygen content in the exhaust, these engines are suitable for 3-Way catalyst, which simultaneously reduces NOx and oxidizes CO and hydrocarbons. A series of 3-Way catalyst tests were conducted on a small natural gas engine at the VTT Technical Research Centre in Espoo, Finland. The overall goals of the testing were to determine the ability of various 3-Way catalysts to meet California emissions regulations and to gather data on HAPs emission reductions. The testing was carried out in two phases. In phase 1, several fresh catalysts were tested at the NOx/CO crossover point (i.e., the point where CO and NOx reduction percent is approximately equal) by using an air/fuel ratio controller to keep the exhaust oxygen level constant. Detailed emissions measurements of both regulated and unregulated emissions were taken. The measurements included NOx, CO, hydrocarbon species, CH2O, N2O, NH3, and H2. In phase 2, the effects of exhaust lambda variation on NOx and CO were studied in more detail, with aged catalyst. Also, different engine loads were tested to vary the space velocity and temperature. This paper describes the testing in more detail and presents some of the resulting data.


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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