Analysis of the Trend and Seasonal Cycle of Carbon Monoxide Concentrations in an Urban Area (4 pp)

Background, Aim and Scope Air quality is an field of major concern in large cities. This problem has led administrations to introduce plans and regulations to reduce pollutant emissions. The analysis of variations in the concentration of pollutants is useful when evaluating the effectiveness of these plans. However, such an analysis cannot be undertaken using standard statistical techniques, due to the fact that concentrations of atmospheric pollutants often exhibit a lack of normality and are autocorrelated. On the other hand, if long-term trends of any pollutant’s emissions are to be detected, meteorological effects must be removed from the time series analysed, due to their strong masking effects. Materials and Methods The application of statistical methods to analyse temporal variations is illustrated using monthly carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations observed at an urban site. The sampling site is located at a street intersection in central Valencia (Spain) with a high traffic density. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain. It is a typical Mediterranean city in terms of its urban structure and climatology. The sampling site started operation in January 1994 and monitored CO ground level concentrations until February 2002. Its geographic coordinates are W0°22′52″ N39°28′05″ and its altitude is 11 m. Two nonparametric trend tests are applied. One of these is robust against serial correlation with regards to the false rejection rate, when observations have a strong persistence or when the sample size per month is small. A nonparametric analysis of the homogeneity of trends between seasons is also discussed. A multiple linear regression model is used with the transformed data, including the effect of meteorological variables. The method of generalized least squares is applied to estimate the model parameters to take into account the serial dependence of the residuals of this model. This study also assesses temporal changes using the Kolmogorov-Zurbenko (KZ) filter. The KZ filter has been shown to be an effective way to remove the influence of meteorological conditions on O₃ and PM to examine underlying trends. Results The nonparametric tests indicate a decreasing, significant trend in the sampled site. The application of the linear model yields a significant decrease every twelve months of 15.8% for the average monthly CO concentration. The 95% confidence interval for the trend ranges from 13.9% to 17.7%. The seasonal cycle also provides significant results. There are no differences in trends throughout the months. The percentage of CO variance explained by the linear model is 90.3%. The KZ filter separates out long, short-term and seasonal variations in the CO series. The estimated, significant, long-term trend every year results in 10.3% with this method. The 95% confidence interval ranges from 8.8% to 11.9%. This approach explains 89.9% of the CO temporal variations. Discussion The differences between the linear model and KZ filter trend estimations are due to the fact that the KZ filter performs the analysis on the smoothed data rather than the original data. In the KZ filter trend estimation, the effect of meteorological conditions has been removed. The CO short-term componentis attributable to weather and short-term fluctuations in emissions. There is a significant seasonal cycle. This component is a result of changes in the traffic, the yearly meteorological cycle and the interactions between these two factors. There are peaks during the autumn and winter months, which have more traffic density in the sampled site. There is a minimum during the month of August, reflecting the very low level of vehicle emissions which is a direct consequence of the holiday period. Conclusions The significant, decreasing trend implies to a certain extent that the urban environment in the area is improving. This trend results from changes in overall emissions, pollutant transport, climate, policy and economics. It is also due to the effect of introducing reformulated gasoline. The additives enable vehicles to burn fuel with a higher air/fuel ratio, thereby lowering the emission of CO. The KZ filter has been the most effective method to separate the CO series components and to obtain an estimate of the long-term trend due to changes in emissions, removing the effect of meteorological conditions. Recommendations and Perspectives Air quality managers and policy-makers must understand the link between climate and pollutants to select optimal pollutant reduction strategies and avoid exceeding emission directives. This paper analyses eight years of ambient CO data at a site with a high traffic density, and provides results that are useful for decision-making. The assessment of long-term changes in air pollutants to evaluate reduction strategies has to be done while taking into account meteorological variability     

Phosphate recovery with granular acid-activated neutralized red mud: Fixed-bed column performance and breakthrough curve modelling

Granular acid-activated neutralized red mud (AaN-RM) has been successfully prepared with good chemical stability and physical strength. However, its potential for industrial application remains unknown. Therefore, the performance of granular AaN-RM for phosphate recovery in a fixed-bed column was investigated. The results demonstrated that the phosphate adsorption performance of granular AaN-RM in a fixed-bed column was affected by various operational parameters, such as the bed depth, flow rate, initial solution pH and initial phosphate concentration. With the optimal empty-bed contact time (EBCT) of 24.27 min, the number of processed bed volumes and the phosphate adsorption capacity reached 496.95 and 84.80 mg/g, respectively. Then, the saturated fixed-bed column could be effectively regenerated with a 0.5 mol/L HCl solution. The desorption efficiency remained as high as 83.45% with a low weight loss of 3.57% in the fifth regeneration cycle. In addition, breakthrough curve modelling showed that a 5-9-1 feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) could be effectively applied for the optimization of the fixed-bed adsorption system; the coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE) evaluated on the validation-testing data were 0.9987 and 0.0183, respectively. Therefore, granular AaN-RM fixed-bed adsorption exhibits promising potential for phosphate removal and recovery from polluted water.     

废旧阴极-赤泥协同处理烧结熟料的溶出性能

采用XRF,ICP-MS,XRD及SEM-EDS检测手段,研究了废旧阴极-赤泥高温协同处理所得熟料的溶出性能.结果表明,Na₂CO₃浓度,温度,时间及液固比因素对Al₂O₃,Na₂O溶出率TFe₂O₃的富集效果的影响趋势一致.最适宜溶出条件为：Na₂CO₃ 30g/L,温度50℃,时间30min,液固比8.该条件下,熟料中Al₂O₃和Na₂O溶出率分别高达为87.41%和92.51%;相应的SiO₂和CaO溶出率仅为3.02%和0.36%,铁矿物几乎不溶.溶出渣中的TFe₂O₃含量从熟料中23.64%提高到39.89%,研究表明溶出工艺同步实现了熟料中铝、钠的回收和铁的富集.再者,处理后溶出渣较熟料减量近16%（以铝和钠溶出率测算）,且属于非危险性废物.     

滤纸法测定悬浮物的干扰及其消除

提出了滤纸法测定悬浮物时，水样的酸碱度，取样量的多少对悬浮物测定有直接的影响。通过实验验证，对于偏酸，偏碱的水样用酸碱中和后再过滤即可消除影响，取样量应根据悬浮物的不同而定。     

火焰原子吸收分光光度法测定鱼内脏及河流底泥中的铜

采用火焰原子吸收分光光度法测定鱼内脏及河流底泥中的铜。鱼内脏经组织捣碎机捣成匀浆后，加硝酸消解；底泥则经氢氟酸和高氯酸消化。该方法具有灵敏度高，精密度和回收率较好等特点。     

恶臭污染防治技术及工程实践

目前，恶臭污染对人类生活的危害日益加剧，文中介绍了几种恶臭污染物的防治技术。对生物滴滤池 活性炭吸附工艺进行了探讨，工程实例表明具有良好的治理效果。     

浅淡大阻力配水系统的技术改造

大阻力配水系统滤池由于采用穿孔钢管配水 ,而穿孔钢管容易腐蚀、结垢 ,导致孔眼堵塞 ,再若高位水箱反冲强度掌握不当 ,会使承托层和滤料冲洗混乱 ,滤池不能正常运行。针对这一问题 ,湖州市自来水公司与浙江省玉环净化厂联手 ,利用该厂滤板、滤头及有关专利新技术 ,对自来水公司的 6万t/d快速滤池进行改造 ,运行半年来 ,取得了满意的结果。     

锦纶生产废水的深度处理研究

采用曝气生物滤池对锦纶生产废水进行深度处理,试验结果表明,该工艺可有效去除CODCr和NH3-N,并在不同运行条件下的运行特性进行了考察,确定试验的最佳气水比。     

清洁生产及其在瑞丽糖厂的实践

瑞丽糖厂从吸滤，发酵，酒精废醪液利用等方面实施清洁生产方案，从源头控制和减少污染物的产生，日排废水减少21792m^2,CODCr消减率达到85．9％，污染得到了有效控制。     

Utilization of Bagasse Energy in Thailand

Bagasse, a biomass fuel, is the waste generated by the sugar-making process from sugar cane. Sugar making is one of the most important agricultural-produce processing industries for developing countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa. As sugar producing plants need electric power and process steam, co-generation using bagasse as an alternate fuel for petroleum has been in use for some time. Thailand recently became one of the largest sugar exporters by enlarging plant capacities and improving equipment, thus reducing its production cost. In addition, the Thai government promotes power generation using bagasse as a means to combat global warming by raising the purchase price of the surplus power. The industry is in the process of further raising the plant capacity, and improving the power-generating efficiency. This will enable a plant to generate more electric power than its in-plant need so that the surplus power can be sold to the commercial grid. It also plans to become a local power supplier during off-season of sugar making by adding a condensing turbine generator. A typical Thai sugar plant of the latest design generates steam of 4Mpa at the bagasse boiler outlet with the temperature of 400°C at 84% boiler efficiency. With the bagasse LHV of 7,540 kJ/kg and that of fuel oil 41, 840 kJ/kg, and taking 90%as oil-burning boiler efficiency, 5.95 kg of bagasse would replace 1 kg of oil. The Kyoto Mechanism defines CO₂ generation by fuel oil as 2.65 kg per liter. Using 0.85for the specific gravity of fuel oil, the amount of CO₂ generation will be 3.12 kg-CO₂/kg. Therefore, CO₂reduction per ton of bagasse in terms of fuel oil will be: 3.12/5.95 =0.524 kg-CO₂/kg-bagasse. As 1 kg of bagasse generates 2 kg of steam, the CO₂reduction of a 100t/h steam boiler will be112,660 ton/year for an annual operation of4,300 hours, as follows. 0.524 × 100/2 = 26.2 t-CO₂/h, 26.2 × 4,300 =112,660 t-CO₂/year. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.