Air dispersion modeling and simulation

Abstract

Air pollution, a major environmental and health risk, is resulting in the death of millions of people around the world. In order to assess the pollution concentrations at many receptors, air dispersion study is done using tools like Computational Fluid Dynamics (ANSYS- FLUENT), CALPUFF, and HYSPLIT. In this thesis, the aim was to study the impact of exhaust gases emitted by industrial stacks on pollution concentration levels at two different locations in the World. The first location is Senegal where two emitting stacks are dispersing SO2 over four different receptors. The simulations were done through CALPUFF, CFD (ANSYS-FLUENT), and HYSPLIT and were compared for validation purposes. The second location is Lebanon. For this case, experimental data obtained from the Ministry of Environment were compared with results obtained from HYSPLIT. Experimental data were obtained from monitoring stations which measure and collect the pollutants concentrations. Subsequently, they were described and visualized with the help of OpenAir. In Lebanon, the meteorological data obtained from Qelhat station showed a dominant southwestern wind resulting in the dispersion of the pollutants from Chekka region over the north area. CFD, CALPUFF and HYSPLIT showed the pollution concentrations at different locations in Senegal. Using OpenAir and HYSPLIT, pollution roses are obtained in order to have a better understanding of the status of Lebanon in terms of pollutant concentrations.