The Use of Meteorological Towers in Urban Air Pollution Programs

Urban air pollution studies frequently require the use of data from meteorological towers. This paper discusses the relevance and application of such data. Wind and vertical temperature difference observations from towers in Montreal, Sarnia, and Ottawa are analyzed and compared. The question of horizontal homogeneity is considered and conclusions are drawn concerning the most suitable location for a meteorological tower.     

Air Pollution and Health

The use of multistage, dry, fluidized beds of continuously recycled, coal-based activated carbon appears technically and economically attractive for both adsorption of stack gas So₂ and sequential conversion to elemental sulfur. Conceptual design details and economic factors are discussed for the treatment of power plant or oil refinery SO₂ effluents with by-product sulfur recovery.     

Air Pollution Acronyms

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis of the thermal flow in the combustion chamber of a solid waste incinerator provides crucial insight into the incinerator’s performance. However, the interrelation of the gas flow with the burning waste has not been adequately treated in many CFD models. A strategy for a combined simulation of the waste combustion and the gas flow in the furnace is introduced here. When coupled with CFD, a model of the waste combustion in the bed provides the inlet conditions for the gas flow field and receives the radiative heat flux onto the bed from the furnace wall and gaseous species. An unsteady one-dimensional bed model was used for the test simulation, in which the moving bed was treated as a packed bed of homogeneous fuel particles. The simulation results show the physical processes of the waste combustion and its interaction with the gas flow for various operational parameters.     

室内空气污染与控制

论述了造成室内空气污染的主要原因，分析了室内空气污染的特点及其危害，并结合房屋建筑过程以及人们日常生活的各个方面，提出了预防及控制室内空气污染的具体方法。     

Air Monitoring Reflects Air Pollution Control Activity

Air monitoring by the A.I.S.I. filter sampling device which both preceded and was concurrent with source control of particulates demonstrated air quality improvement over a ten-year period. A difference in improvement from that estimated by the pollution control agency resulted from difference in the measurement parameters.     

Air Pollution Research Problems

The TR-l Research Committee of the Air Pollution Control Association conducted a survey during 1969–70 to determine what air pollution research problems require attention. All APCA committees were requested to contribute topics to this survey, especially within their area of activity. Other professional societies were contacted through liaison representatives of APCA. The responses to the survey have been reviewed, categorized, selected, and edited for inclusion in this report. Additional material and concepts have been contributed by members of the TR-l Committee.     

Air Pollution Control Philosophies

Most air pollution control programs rest on one or more of the following four basic philosophies: emission standards, air quality standards, emission taxes, and cost benefit analysis. Frequently they rest on mixtures or combinations of these four. This paper examines each of the four separately, tries to show why each is different from the others, and compares their advantages and disadvantages.     

Meteorological Considerations in Air Quality Planning

Results from dispersion models which are routinely used for regulatory purposes do not reflect the uncertainties which are Inherent In the input data. To remedy this, a formula for propagating measurement uncertainties of emission rate, wind speed, wind direction, horizontal dispersion parameter, vertical dispersion parameter, effective emission height, and mixing depth is derived for EPA’s Industrial Source Complex Short Term (ISCST) Gaussian dispersion model for the simple case of a single stack-type source and nonbuoyant plume. Values for the uncertainties of the input variables are chosen and used to calculate ambient concentration uncertainties. These calculated uncertainties are compared with the standard deviation of ambient concentrations calculated from 2500 input data sets for each of four stability classes and three downwind distances, which were randomly altered to simulate the effects of measurement uncertainty. The calculated uncertainties do not differ significantly from the standard deviations of the randomized calculations for input data uncertainties as high as 30 percent and Stability Classes A-C. The calculated uncertainties overestimate the actual uncertainty of model calculations for input data uncertainties greater than 20 percent for Stability Class D.     

A Low-Level Air Sampling and Meteorological Sounding System

A captive-balloon borne radio transmitting device measuring temperature and humidity at desired levels in the lower thousand feet of the atmosphere over a city is described. A companion device which captures a sample of air at a desired altitude and a method of later determining trace gas concentrations in the sample is presented. Temperature, humidity, and methane concentrations in air samples taken above Cincinnati were-determined and are presented as examples of the system’s capabilities.     

Epidemiological Aspects of Air Pollution

An urban air pollution incident, like a natural or man-made catastrophe, presents a crisis situation which can only be relieved if adequate contingency plans have been prepared in advance and an effective control organization is in a state of operational readiness to meet the threatened emergency. Although many air pollution incident control plans have been proposed in the past, most have remained in the conceptual or theoretical stages of preparation, because the relative infrequency of serious urban air pollution crises and the disruptive nature of major emission control operations tend to limit the opportunities available for field testing of these plans. In this respect, air pollution incident control planning is analogous to strategic planning for a military operation, where the only completely legitimate test of a strategy is applied on the battlefield. In order to accomplish the transition from conceptual planning to a practical, operational field strategy for air pollution incident control, a program of incident control tests has been initiated in Chicago. These field tests, which use the city as a laboratory for the development of control strategies, are analogous to a series of military war games in which communication systems, command and control organizational structures, personnel roles, surveillance and monitoring equipment, control resources and pollution source controllability are tested under conditions which approximate as closely as possible the situation which prevails during an actual air pollution incident. This paper discusses the evolution of an incident control strategy from an initial, fixed response emission control exercise, through a meteorologically initiated control test to a fairly realistic war game series which is still developing.     

Variance Design and Air Pollution Control

Confronted with shortages of low sulfur content residual fuel oil and, consequently, faced with the threat of social and economic upheaval, several air pollution control authorities in the Northeastern states were forced to relax hard-won air quality standards during the winter of 1972. The authorities did so by granting variances to their sulfur content standards for residual fuel oil. This paper examines the institutional characteristics of these variance policies from an economic incentive standpoint. After setting up desirable structural criteria for institutional design of such crisis policies, the authors examine the experience of the winter of 1972 and arrive at policy guidelines which recommend themselves for consideration in future periods of fuel oil shortages.