Dispersion Modeling of Air Pollution from Copper Smelter Emissions

This study was undertaken to assess the dispersion pattern of air pollutants in the vicinity of a copper smelter plant applying air pollution dispersion modeling which is the most useful, economic and reliable tool to predict air quality impacts of pollution sources. The main sources of air pollution for this plant are two stacks containing a dryer electrofilter and a converter electrofilter. The necessary input data for modeling analysis include stack heights and diameters, emission rates, outlet flow rates and exhausting temperatures that werecollected through field studies and sampling. In addition, topological and meteorological data were gathered and analyzed. Gaussian-based model has been used to simulate the dispersion pattern of hazardous pollutants, including SO2, NO2, and PM10 near the plant up to 25 km distance. The calibration of the model was done considering the roughness and the main buildings that cause the maximum effect on pollutant dispersion within that area. To validate the model, eight ambient air monitoring stations considering four different directions related to the copper plant were specified. Model predictions showed a relatively good agreement with measured data at ambient stations with the correlation coefficient (R2) of more than 0.7 for all pollutants.

Keywords:

Air pollution , Emission inventories , Ambient monitoring , Dispersion modeling