Reference no: EM133750119
1. Atmosphere
Elevated inversions (for example, Fig 6.10 in the textbook) are a prime factor responsible for air pollution problems. It is interesting to consider the feasibility of eliminating an elevated inversion layer. In principle, this could be done either by cooling all the air from the inversion base upward to a potential temperature below that at the inversion base, or by heating all the air below the top of the inversion to a potential temperature higher than that at the inversion top.
Consider an elevated inversion with the following attributes: mixing depth and thickness are 500 m. Temperatures (deg C) at ground, base, and top are 20, 15.1, and 18, respectively. Above 1 km, the air is absolutely unstable. Assume dry air, with a heat capacity of 1.0 J/g-K.
(a) To what temperature would a ground-level parcel of air need to be heated to rise to the top of the inversion? To what temperature would a parcel of air at 500 m need to be heated to rise to the top of the inversion?
(b) Consider a pollution-reduction proposal to break the inversion by adding enough heat to the air that all air below the inversion top would rise to the top of the inversion. Determine the amount of energy needed for a small city (100-km2, 1e5 people) to carry out this scheme. (Hint: building on your answer to part "a", use piecewise integration to consider all parcels of air, from ground-level to the top of the inversion.) Compare your answer against the daily electricity consumption for this city, assuming US-average per capita electricity consumption. According to EIA, US total annual energy consumption in 2022 was 29.4e9 MWh.
2. Dioxins from the incineration of medical waste
It is common practice for infectious waste collected at hospitals to be burned in on-site incinerators. Incineration is effective at destroying pathogens; on-site processing eliminates risks associated with transit of the waste. The presence of chlorinated plastics in these wastes leads to the production of polychlorinated dioxins (PCDD) and polychlorinated furans (PCDF) that are released to the atmosphere from the flue gases. Because hospitals are centrally located in densely populated areas, the potential for human exposure to these toxic chemicals is large. As sources of air pollution, hospital incinerators are largely unregulated and uncontrolled.
You have been hired to help in an assessment of total human exposure to PCDD.
Although the waste bags are fed to the incinerator intermittently, you may assume for this analysis that the emission rate is constant. You may treat the ground as a perfectly reflecting surface.
(a) Plot the ground-level concentration vs distance, x, downwind (y=0) of the source.
(b) At the position, xmax, of the maximum ground-level concentration, plot the ground level concentration vs crosswind distance, y.
(c) At the position xmax and at y=0, plot the concentration versus height, z.
Based on information you find online, give a summary (3-5 sentences) of each the following air pollution models, giving its main features and saying how it works, what the inputs/outputs are, and how it differs (the model itself or when it is used) from the other models. Then, give three advantages and three disadvantages for each model.
a) AERMOD
b) InMAP
c) HYSPLIT