WIT Press


Application Of Air Compass Software For Source Identification Of Semi-volatile Organic Compounds In Whitbourne, UK

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

157

Pages

10

Page Range

179 - 188

Published

2012

Size

1,958 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/AIR120161

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

S. Pongpiachan, T. Supadit, P. Hirunyatrakul, I. Kittikoon & S. Whangthamrongwit

Abstract

One of the most controversial issues on air pollution field is how to quantitatively identify the emission source of gaseous species in atmospheric environment. Air Compass Software was carefully designed for this special purpose by using C# program. Given that wind direction is measured as an angle (α) relative to true north (0), mean direction was determined by using trigonometric relations to determine the direction of the resultant of individual wind vectors. The emission source strength – wind direction relationship can be represented graphically by plotting R-value of (natural logarithm of partial pressure) vs. against downwind angle (α) during the monitoring period. To apply this relationship, measured atmospheric concentrations must be expressed as partial pressures (P), which can be converted through the use of the ideal gas law with a temperature correction. The aims of this study are to statistically quantify the relationships between emission source strengths and downwind angles of Semi-Volatile Organic Compounds (SVOCs) measured at Whitbourne monitoring stations adjacent to Worcester city, UK from 20/11/2003 to 22/12/2003 (cold-period) and from 5/5/2004 to 26/5/2004 (warm-period). Air

Keywords

semi-volatile organic compounds, wind direction, trigonometric, air compass software, Whitbourne