Sustainable Air Quality

1
Sustainable Air Quality

• ME 449, 2007

2
Health Care
Sustainability

• The physicians evaluate a patients health by
  measuring the temperature, pulse rate, the
  cholesterol level and other vital signs. For
  diagnosis, doctors use many tools, like x-ray
  images, ultrasound scans, usually in combination.

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Living Earth
The Earth is also like a living organism.
Following James Lovelock, it has become necessary
to monitor the health of people as well as the
health of planet Earth itself.
The Earth is constantly changing due to physical
aging and evolution of the biosphere. Some of the
changes occur slowly in a steadily and
foreseeably, other changes occur quickly,
unexpectedly, and unevenly in space and time.
From human point of view, many of these abrupt
changes are catastrophic events.
Some of the changes, short and long term, are
caused by human activities and those are
controllable.
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Major Biogeochemical Processes Visualized by
Aerosols
Dust storms
Fires
Volcanoes
Anthropogenic pollution
These processes are producing visible aerosols in
form of dust, smoke, and haze. The quantity and
spatial-temporal distribution of dust and smoke
and haze can be used to characterize the flow of
substances through the atmosphere.
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Explaining Change
The basic elements of life including carbon,
nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium are in constant
circulation between the earths major
environmental compartments atmosphere,
hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere. These
earths compartments remain in balance as long as
the rate of flow of matter and energy in and out
of the compartments is unchanged.
Changes in the environmental compartments will
occur if the circulation (in and out flow) of the
substances is perturbed. For example, the
concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere has been increasing because the
rate of input is larger than the rate of output
from the atmosphere.
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Sensory-Motor Response to Changes
Regardless whether the Earth is considered
healthy or sick, the inevitable and
unforeseeable environmental changes require
response to these changes The response includes
the following major steps
Sensing and recognition (monitoring)
Reasoning and explaining (sciences)
Decision making, action (management)

The above three steps are the necessary
conditions for sustainable development. This is
logical since all living organisms use this type
of sensory-motor feedback to maintain their
existence.
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Air Quality Management Sensory Data to Action
Multi-sensory data are collected through
Monitoring and delivered for Assessment
Assessment performs data analysis to turn data
into useful knowledge for decision making and
actions
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Example London Fog

• Population London, a cold December week in 1957
• Activity home heating using soft, high-sulfur
  coal
• Emissions SO2
• Transport low wind speed SO2 is accumulated
• Chemical transformation SO2 ? SO42- ? acid
  aerosols (H2SO4)
• Effect 4000 deaths above normal (2.6 increase)
• Regulation Reduce the use of soft coal
• Change Activity fuel switching change to hard
  coal, oil, gas, electricity

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• The activities of humans result in direct
  emissions of pollutants to the atmosphere
• Once airborne, these pollutants are transported,
  transformed, and concentrated
• The resulting pollutants may have negative
  effects on humans, plants, animals, and nature
• As a result of negative effects, laws and
  regulations are promulgated to either alter the
  activities or control their emissions with end
  of the pipe controls. Both of these strategies
  aim to reduce emissions.

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The Earth System

• Atmosphere
• Conveyer of mass, moves mass source to receptor
• Small storage capacity
• Hydrosphere
• River system conveyer collects substances in
  watershed
• Oceans long-term geochemical reservoir
• Lithosphere
• Solid shell of inorganic matter at surface of the
  Earth made of up of soil particles and rock down
  to 50km
• Within soil, biochemical reactions by
  microorganisms are responsible for most of the
  chemical changes of matter
• Biosphere
• Thin shell of organic matter on the Earths
  surface (occupies the least volume)
• Chemical pump for much of the flow of matter
  through nature
• Responsible for grand scale recycling of energy
  and matter on the Earth

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Source Types and Emissions

• Primary pollutants
• Substances that are emitted directly into the
  atmosphere
• E.g. VOCs, NOX, CO, particulate matter (PM)
• Secondary pollutants
• Pollutants formed in the environment through
  chemical or photochemical transformations of
  primary pollutants
• E.g. tropospheric ozone, PM
• Anthropogenic sources
• Cars NOX, VOCs, Pb, CO
• Power plants NOX, CO2, CO, SO2
• Agriculture PM, NH4
• Natural sources
• Wind blown dust PM
• Plants VOCs
• Volcanoes SO2, PM
• Fires smoke (PM), CO2, Hg

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Effects of Air Pollution

• Air pollution affects the following
• Human health (acute and chronic effects)
• Animals
• Plants
• Materials
• Visibility
• Climate

Pollution Exposure (Dose)
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Sustainability Reuse of Materials
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Population - Energy/Goods Consumption Materials
Flow - Emissions
Goods Energy,(GE) i
FuelsMater.(FM), j
EconMeasure(EM)
Emission (EM), k
SOx
Industr. Goods
Metals
Industr. Energy
NOx
Ind. Chemicals
Industrial Prod.
Pop., P
Transp. Energy
Coal
HC
Transportation
ResCom.Engy
Oil
PM
ResComercial
Gas
Electric Energy
Mercury
ai Consump./Person
bij Fuels/Energy
cjk Emission/Fuel-

• Ek S cjk EMj S S bij cjk GEi S S S ai
  bij cjk P

j
j
i
i
i
j
Consumption of Goods and Energy GE S ai P
Fuels and Materials Flow FM S S ai bij P
Emission of Pollutants EM S S S ai bij cjk P