Impact Assessment of Pollutant Emissions in the Atmosphere from a Power Plant over a Complex Terrain and under Unsteady Winds

Grazia Ghermandi, Sara Fabbi, Barbara Arvani, Giorgio Veratti, Alessandro Bigi and Sergio Teggi
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Grazia Ghermandi: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy
Sara Fabbi: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy
Barbara Arvani: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy
Giorgio Veratti: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy
Alessandro Bigi: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy
Sergio Teggi: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Enzo Ferrari, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, via P. Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: The development of a natural gas-fired tri-generation power plant (520 MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbines + 58 MW Tri-generation) in the Republic of San Marino, a small independent country in Northern Italy, is under assessment. This work investigates the impact of atmospheric emissions of NO x by the plant, under the Italian and European regulatory framework. The impact assessment was performed by the means of the Aria Industry package, including the 3D Lagrangian stochastic particle dispersion model SPRAY, the diagnostic meteorological model SWIFT, and the turbulence model SURFPRO (Aria Technologies, France, and Arianet, Italy). The Republic of San Marino is almost completely mountainous, 10 km west of the Adriatic Sea and affected by land-sea breeze circulation. SPRAY is suitable for simulations under non-homogenous and non-stationary conditions, over a complex topography. The emission scenario included both a worst-case meteorological condition and three 10-day periods representative of typical atmospheric conditions for 2014. The simulated NO x concentrations were compared with the regulatory air quality limits. Notwithstanding the high emission rate, the simulation showed a spatially confined environmental impact, with only a single NO x peak at ground where the plume hits the hillside of the Mount Titano (749 m a.s.l.), 5 km west of the future power plant.

Keywords: dispersion model; tri-generation power plant emission; atmospheric dispersion; NOx; complex topography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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