Search

One of the benefits of the combined heat and power (CHP) systems is reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) in the national level. These systems are installed in the close vicinity of local communities and their pollution can directly affect the local environment. This paper studies the adverse environmental effects of a 2 MW gas-burning CHP (GB-CHP) system in a residential community in Mashhad, Iran. We compare the amount of C O 2 and N O x emissions from the GB-CHP with the conventional choice of supplying electricity from the central power plants and heat from the locally installed boilers. The results show that the GB-CHP system increases local C O 2 and N O x emissions by approximately two and six times, respectively. The N O x emission is increased from 3.1 tonnes to 18.7 tonnes. The C O 2 emission increases from 3623 tonnes to 7238 tonnes. Furthermore, we use Gaussian Dispersion model to estimate the concentration of these emissions in the local area using the weather conditions of the most polluted times of the previous year. The results show that for a 3-meter stack, the maximum concentration of C O 2 and N O x are 14.8 m g / m 3 and 38.1 μ g / m 3 , respectively. Our analysis shows that increasing the height of the GB-CHP stack from 3 meters to 10 meters reduces the concentration by 40%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents airborne measurements of multiple atmospheric trace constituents including greenhouse gases (such as CO 2 , CH 4 , O 3 ) and biomass burning tracers (such as CO, CH 3 CN) downwind of an exceptionally large wildfire. In summer 2013, the Rim wildfire, ignited just west of the Yosemite National Park, California, and burned over 250,000 acres of the forest during the 2-month period (17 August to 24 October) before it was extinguished. The Rim wildfire plume was intercepted by flights carried out by the NASA Ames Alpha Jet Atmospheric eXperiment (AJAX) on 29 August and the NASA DC-8, as part of SEAC 4 RS (Studies of Emissions, Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys), on 26 and 27 August during its intense, primary burning period. AJAX revisited the wildfire on 10 September when the conditions were increasingly smoldering, with slower growth. The more extensive payload of the DC-8 helped to bridge key measurements that were not available as part of AJAX (e. g. CO). Data analyses are presented in terms of emission ratios (ER), emission factors (EF) and combustion efficiency and are compared with previous wildfire studies. ERs were 8.0 ppb CH 4 (ppm CO 2 ) −1 on 26 August, 6.5 ppb CH 4 (ppm CO 2 ) −1 on 29 August and 18.3 ppb CH 4 (ppm CO 2 ) −1 on 10 September 2013. The increase in CH 4 ER from 6.5 to 8.0 ppb CH 4 (ppm CO 2 ) −1 during the primary burning period to 18.3 ppb CH 4 (ppm CO 2 ) −1 during the fire's slower growth period likely indicates enhanced CH 4 emissions from increased smoldering combustion relative to flaming combustion. Given the magnitude of the Rim wildfire, the impacts it had on regional air quality and the limited sampling of wildfire emissions in the western United States to date, this study provides a valuable dataset to support forestry and regional air quality management, including observations of ERs of a wide number of species from the Rim wildfire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]