Micro-scale Dispersion of Air Pollutants over an Urban Setup in a Coastal Region

Abstract

The dispersion is mainly governed by wind field and depends on the planetary boundary layer (PBL) dynamics. Accurate representation of the meteorological weather fields would improve the dispersion assessments. In urban areas representation of wind around the obstacles is not possible for the pollution dispersion studies using Gaussian based modeling studies. It is widely accepted that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools would provide reasonably good solution to produce the wind fields around the complex structures and other land scale elements. By keeping in view of the requirement for the micro-scale dispersion, a commercial CFD model PANACHE with PANEPR developed by Fluidyn is implemented to study the micro-scale dispersion of air pollution over an urban setup at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), Kalpakkam a coastal station in the east coast of India under stable atmospheric conditions. Meso-scale module of the PANACHE model is integrated with the data generated at the site by IGCAR under RRE (Round Robin Exercise) program to develop the flow fields. Using this flow fields, CFD model is integrated to study the micro-scale dispersion. Various pollution dispersion scenarios are developed using hypothetical emission inventory during stably stratified conditions to understand the micro-scale dispersion over different locations of coastal urban set up in the IGCAR region of Kalpakkam.

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S. Madala, A. Satyanarayana and V. Prasad, "Micro-scale Dispersion of Air Pollutants over an Urban Setup in a Coastal Region," Open Journal of Air Pollution, Vol. 1 No. 2, 2012, pp. 51-58. doi: 10.4236/ojap.2012.12007.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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