MODELING & ANALYSIS OF AVIATION EMISSIONS IMPACT ON LOCAL AIR QUALITY

Abstract

Air transportation growth has rapidly increased over the years and notable influences of aviation emissions on local and regional air quality as well as on climate are identified. The environmental impacts of atmospheric emissions from aircraft have been addressed in two separate ways; aircraft pollutant emissions occurring during the landing and take-off (LTO) phase (local pollutant emissions), and the non-LTO phase (global/regional pollutant emissions). Aircraft pollutant emissions are an important source of pollution and directly or indirectly harmfully affect human health and ecosystems. In this work harmonized methodology for emissions estimation as well as recent estimated emissions for Croatia will be presented in relation to European and global trends. The WRF-Chem model is applied with modified aviation emissions in order to calculate local air concentrations of CO2, PM10 and SO2 around the Zagreb airport in Croatia. The EMEP model is used to estimate the background contributions with several different emission scenarios. The management of air quality have to include major sources within the urban area and the application air quality models is essential in identification of environmental impacts.

Full text

MODELING & ANALYSIS OF AVIATION EMISSIONS IMPACT ON
LOCAL AIR QUALITY
Amela Jeričević and Goran Gašparac
CCAA & GEKOM Zagreb

-Emissions estimations
-Measurements analyses
-Model (WRFChem, CAMx) calculation
-Conclusions
Overview

Aviation emissions
The emissions produced by aviation come from the
use of jet fuel (jet kerosene and jet gasoline) and
aviation gasoline (small piston engine aircraft only)
the principal pollutants (common to other
combustion activities)
CO2, CO, HC and NO, SO2 ( dependent of the level
of sulphur in the fuel.)
Other important species, emitted at relatively low
concentrations include PM , N2O and CH4.
TIER 1
The emission factors have been averaged over all flying
phases assuming 10 % of the fuel is used in the LTO

The total contribution of aircraft emissions to total global anthropogenic CO2
emissions is considered to be about 2 % (IPCC, 1999).
This relatively small contribution to global emissions should be seen in relation to
the fact that most aircraft emissions are injected almost directly into the upper free
troposphere and lower stratosphere. IPCC has estimated that the contribution to
radiative forcing is about 3.5 %.
The importance of this source is growing as the volume of air traffic is steadily
increasing.
Contribution of air traffic to total emissions

ICAO LTO cycle
Below 3000 ft
The ICAO Aircraft
Engine Exhaust
Databank (AEED)
contains rates of fuel
flow and emission
indices for NOx, HC and
CO as a function of the
engine thrust setting
for a large number of
types of aircraft engine.

Aircraft movements-Eurocontrol database
Emissions_LTO= Activity(N_ LTO cyclus)*E_LTO
DDR2
SAAM tool

Emissions per
type and freq.
700 kg/day
~1% of road transport emissions

AQ
Measurements
Emission contribution quantified
through monitoring
Gorica
~1 km SE (NOx)
ZG3 (UB)
~ 3.5 km NW (NOx, O3, SO2,CO,
PM10)
ZG1 (UT)
~ 6 km NW (NOx, PM10, CO, SO2)

Measurements-time series
Urban Traffic Urban Background(N from airport) Urban Background
(S from the airport)

R, Openair, Carslaw, 2012

Model was run for the case study
period 1.-6. August 2015.
-Models setup horizontal
domains (2.2 km x 2.2 km), 50
vertical levels
EMISSIONS
-Anthropogenic emissions-
RETRO/EDGARv4
-aviation emissions: vertically
agregated in the grid in
WRFChem and CAMx
WRFChem & CAMx

Model

Ozone

CAMx a
30% contribution to surface concentrations
due to aviation emissions

CAMx-cont

Pleso

Conclusions
WRFChem well represented the wind flow but both models
underestimated night time NO2 –road transport emissions not well
represented
CAMx contribution due to aviation emissions up to 30%
Bivariate polar plot usefull toll for assesing the sources of AP but the
stations representativity should be carefully assessed

Future plans
Deatiled Emissions
There is currently little information available to estimate emissions
from start up of engines and these are not included in the LTO cycle.
This is not of great importance for total national emissions, but they
may have an impact on the air quality in the vicinity of airports.
Models (ADMS)
Mesurements-longer time periods and pollutants e.g. PM-fine