Assessment of atmospheric air pollution by coal and fuel oil combustion products and fuel oil on the example of neighborhood boiler plants in Ulan-Ude

Abstract

The city of Ulan-Ude is annually included in the priority list of cities with the highest level of atmospheric air pollution. The main stationary sources of pollutant emissions into the atmosphere of Ulan-Ude are heat and power enterprises. Their contribution to the total air pollution of the city by stationary sources is about 45%. As fuel they use hard and brown coal and fuel oil. The purpose of the presented work was to study the influence of different types of fuel on atmospheric air pollution based on the results of computational modeling and experimental assessment of snow cover quality. The objects of the study were neighborhood boiler plants located in Ulan-Ude (Aeroport settlement, Glass Factory settlement). The computational modeling was carried out using the Unified program of atmospheric pollution calculation “Web-Prisma-Enterprise”. Analysis of microelement composition of melted snow water was performed by inductively coupled plasma method on Agilent 7500ce quadrupole mass spectrometer. The results of pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere showed an excess of the calculated surface concentrations at coal combustion for solid and gaseous substances compared to similar concentrations produced at fuel oil combustion by 2.45-141.4 times. In contrast, according to the experimental snow cover studies, the fuel oil-fired boiler plant contributes more pollution (Z = 1563.80 - very high pollution level) compared to the boiler plant using coal as fuel (Z = 107.61 - average pollution level). The reasons for this discrepancy may be imperfections in the methodology of calculating emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere: particulate matter (coal or fuel oil ash) is subject to regulation without taking into account their chemical composition; the algorithm of dispersion of emissions does not take into account the density of buildings around the source of emissions into the atmosphere.

Keywords

• boiler house
• atmospheric pollution
• coal
• fuel oil
• dispersion of pollutants
• snow cover