Modelagem da eficiência de estratégias de controle de emissões atmosféricas na qualidade do ar local

Abstract

Growing levels of urbanization in developing countries have generally resulted in increasing air pollution, due to higher activity in the transportation, energy, and industrial sectors. The identification and understanding of the multiple pollutant sources´ contribution to air quality in such sectors, locally and regionally, is essential to designing an effective emission control policy. Air quality modelling associated with emission scenarios is an important tool that can provide guidance on the most efficient and effective air quality management strategy. This work focuses on Piracicaba, an industrial municipality with a total area of 1378 km² and a population of 365 thousand inhabitants, located in the state of São Paulo. After updating its air quality standards in 2013 to levels suggested by the World Health Organization, the state of São Paulo has proposed a state-wide stationary and mobile sources emission reduction program, singling out locations in which air quality levels do not comply with the updated standards. Control strategies proposed so far focus on local stationary sources, (mainly sugar-alcohol, automotive and steel industries) largely underestimating vehicle emissions and regional contributions from the neighboring Metropolitan Area of São Paulo to the local air quality. This work aims to model this scenario by preparing spatially and temporally averaged emissions from local industrial sources, using mandatory monitoring data and process-based estimations, along with secondary emission inventories from the EDGAR HTAP_V2 project to represent other significant emission sources. This data is processed using SMOKE which, along with a local and regional WRF meteorological model, serve as an input for modelling emission reduction scenarios and estimating their effectiveness in achieving the expected air quality levels, using CMAQ. Results estimate that a 20% reduction in local particulate matter (PM) emissions results in up to 24% improvement in PM concentration levels, but a 20% reduction in tropospheric ozone precursors emissions results in a 5% increase in averaged local ozone concentration levels in critical areas. This project provides a framework for further evaluation of emission reduction scenarios and its impact on local air quality applicable to the Piracicaba region, and that can be reproduced in other municipalities across the country.