CE 55700 – Air Quality Management

Credits and contact hours:

  • 3 credits
  • Lecture meets twice per week for 75 minutes for 15 weeks

Specific course information:

  • Catalog description: Discussion of fugitive, mobile, and point sources of air pollution with attendant effects on materials, plants, and humans. Development and status of state and federal regulations with emphasis on the development and use of mathematical dispersion models including meteorological fundamentals and atmospheric transport. Discussion of concepts for ambient air quality control strategies including urban planning and transportation considerations.
  • Prerequisites: a course in undergraduate fluid mechanics or consent of instructor
  • Course status: Elective course

Specific Goals for the course:

  • Student learning outcomes - Upon successful completion of this course the student shall be able to:
    • understand the concept of the air pollution regulations both at the state and federal level for the Ambient Air Quality Standards and the Source Emission Standards
    • analyze the meteorological effects for dispersion of air pollutants relating to the atmospheric lapse, greenhouse effects, local and global circulation
    • identify the stability class of the atmosphere by inspection and evaluation of meteorological data
    • appreciate the precision and accuracy of using the regulatory diffusion models for air permitting applications
    • calculate the downwind, groundlevel concentration of an air pollutant released from time continuous elevated point sources, fugitive sources, mobile sources or time instantaneous releases
    • analyze the problematic aspects of an ambient air pollution release and design the experiment to calculate the downwind concentrations of a selected pollutant including grid network, source release factors, topographic, meteorological and building aerodynamic downwash impacts
  •  Relationship of course to program outcomes
    • Outcome 1: An ability to identify, formulate and calculate complex ambient air pollution concentrations from varied sources by applying principles of engineering, meteorology and mathematics.

Topics:

  • Why Dispersion Modeling is Performed
    • Health impacts
    • Regulatory requirements
    • Plant siting considerations
  • Physics of the Atmosphere
    • Concept of a lapse on dispersion, potential temperature, wind speed and direction, albedo, Bowen Ratio, roughness length
  • Meteorological Measurements, reporting stations, data availability
  • Estimating the Effective Height of Sources
  • Estimating Dispersion from Continuous Releases
  • Estimating Dispersion from Instantaneous Releases
  • Estimating Dispersion from Puff, Line and Area Sources
  • The Double, Normal Gaussian Dispersion model
  • Data input to Models
  • Modeling dense gas releases
  • Modeling downwash of plumes due to the influence of buildings
  • Consideration of Terrain in Modeling
  • Environmental Risk Analysis
  • Aircraft Ozone measurements