An Instrument for Direct Measurement of Emissions: Cooling Tower Example

Measuring emissions from stacks is challenging due to accessibility and safety concerns, and requires techniques to address a broad range of conditions and measurement challenges. One way to facilitate such measurements is to build an instrument package and then use a crane to hold the package over the emissions source. Here we describe such an instrument package that is used to characterize both wet droplet and dried aerosol emissions from cooling tower spray drift. In this application, the instrument package characterizes the velocity, size distribution and concentration of the wet droplet emissions and the mass concentration and elemental composition of the dried PM2.5 and PM10 emissions. Subsequent papers will present and analyze the wet and dried emissions from individual towers.

Air Pollution Observations in Selected Locations in Poland during the Lockdown Related to COVID-19

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has caused huge changes in people’s daily habits and had a significant impact on the economy. The lockdowns significantly reduced road traffic and meant that many people worked remotely. Therefore, the question arose as to how the reduced road traffic and stays of residents at home affected the degree of pollution and the structure of major air pollutants. To answer this question, the article presents an analysis of changes in typical air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, NO2) in the five largest Polish cities and one of the voivodships. The data from the Polish State Environmental Monitoring were used for the analysis. The analysis showed that the period of the first lockdown in Poland (April 2020), despite the reduced road traffic, resulted in a significant increase in PM10 emissions (9–91% during working days and an average of 30% on Saturdays and Sundays), a slight increase in PM2.5 emissions (on average from 2% to 11% for all analyzed locations), and a reduction in NO2 emissions (on average from 6% to 11% for all analyzed locations) compared to the period before the lockdown. However, the changes were not homogeneous—in Łódź and Warsaw, in most cases, an increase in all analyzed pollutants was observed, and the greatest decrease in pollution took place in Małopolska voivodship (including Kraków). Comparing the data from April 2020 to the data from April 2019, the overall difference in the PMs concentrations was small, although there are places where there has been a significant decrease (Wrocław, Poznań), and there were also places where the concentration increased (Warsaw, Łódź, Małopolska). In the case of nitrogen dioxide, pollution concentration decreased in most locations. The only exception was the background stations in Warsaw, where the increase was 27%.

Assessment of PM2.5 and PM10 Emissions in the Metallurgical Industry from Romania

The article focuses on the evaluation of PM2.5 and PM10, pollutants resulting from the metallurgical industry in Romania. The analysed period is 2008-2018 and the dataset was provided by the National Institute of Statistics. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of final energy consumption in the metallurgical industry on PM10 and PM2.5 emissions. We included in the study three fundamental factors: the final energy consumption in the metallurgical industry and the particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5). The average of PM10 for reference period is 4026 Tone (Mg) while for the PM2.5 the average is 3645 Tone (Mg). The trend of final energy consumption in the metallurgical industry is identical to the trend of PM2.5 and PM10, which indicates that this factor has a major influence on the amount of PM2.5 and PM10 emissions. PM2.5 and PM10 emission factors represent primary emissions from the metallurgical industry activities and do not consider the formation of secondary aerosol from chemical reaction in the environment afterwards the discharge.

Representativeness of airborne brake wear emission for the automotive industry: A review

Brake wear gives 16%–55% by mass to total non-exhaust traffic related PM10 emissions in urban environments. While engines have become cleaner in the past decades, few improvements were made to lower non-exhaust emission until recently. Researchers have developed several experimental methods over the past years to assess brake emissions. However, observations tend to differ from a method to another with respect to many disciplines, ranging from particle system characterization to brake cycles, and it remains difficult to compare results of different research groups. It is so crucial to get a consensus on the standard experimental method. The following article lists limits which influence measurements and has to be taken into account when comparing works from different laboratories. This article also discusses how to design tests to get a relevant braking particle system characterization.