Mercury Air Emission from Coal-Fired Public Power Sector: Uncertainty and Its Monthly Distribution. Case Study from Poland

The paper presents two aspects concerned with the mercury air emission inventory from coal-fired public power and energy plants: an uncertainty analysis, using Monte Carlo simulation (Journal of the American Statistical Association, 44(247), 335–341 1949) and the monthly distributions applying the Denton-Cholette approach (Dagum & Cholette 2006). The analysis determines uncertainty about the estimates mercury air emission from 1990 to 2012 including the development of air pollution control (APC) technologies in the Polish public power and energy sector, also the monthly distributions in comparison with previously obtained results (H?awiczka 2008). The uncertainty of mercury (Hg) content in fuel is 31.6% for hard coal and 42.4% for brown coal. The confidence interval for the estimated emission changed from [kg] (16,082.2; 16,242.2) in 1990 to (10,525.9;10,671.1) in 2012. However, the Denton-Cholette approach overestimates the emissions for the warmer periods of the year, but it could, however, in our view, be applied to attain the monthly distributions.     

Spatial surrogate for domestic combustion’s air emissions: A case study from Silesian Metropolis,Poland

The aim of this study is improving currently applied methodology for spatial disaggregation, as well as mapping air emission inventories by taking into account the auxiliary spatial data on population density. District heating infrastructure occurring in more populated areas changes distinctly the spatial distribution of estimated air emission; however, it does not change the initial estimate. That means the total, disaggregated value is constant. Considered sources of domestic combustion are located in the central part of the Silesian Metropolis, in the southern part of Poland. A large part of this area is strongly urbanized and supplied with heat (hot water) from the district heating system. Data on population density help to determine the area within which the dwellers use heat energy and hot water supplied by the heating infrastructure, apart from heating with small domestic boilers and stoves. This causes the domestic combustion’s emission impact within the distinguished area to be significantly lower in comparison to the official guidelines on air emission inventories. The important differences in spatial air emissions distributions calculated using a top-down approach are found for strongly urbanized areas supplied partly with heat and hot water from the district heating network. This fact should be taken into account when preparing detailed, high-resolution emission inventories for air regional and local quality modeling.

Implications: The spatial issues connected with elaboration of the high-resolution emission inventories are presented for the example of the populated area of the Silesian Metropolis (Poland). Spatial distribution of the population density is used to determine the area supplied with heat and hot water from the district heating system. It changes distinctly the spatial distribution of the air emission from small residential combustion sources.     

Vehicle Hydrocarbons’ Emission Characteristics Determined Using the Monte Carlo Method

Environmental Modeling & Assessment - Hydrocarbons (HCs) are products of incomplete combustion process which can occur during operation of the internal combustion engines (Flagan and Seinfeld...