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Air Quality and Control: Lecture No. 5

This document discusses air quality and control. It defines clean air and lists the major components of air. It then discusses major air pollutants including particulates like dust, fume, mist, smoke and spray. It also discusses gaseous pollutants like carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Sources of air pollution include stationary combustion, transportation, industrial processes and solid waste disposal. The effects of air pollution on human health, acid rain, photochemical smog, ozone depletion and global warming are outlined. Methods to control particulates include settling chambers, cyclones, bag filters, spray towers and electrostatic precipitators. Control of gaseous pollutants includes wet scrubbers, adsorption

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Illumi Zaoldyeck
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38 views

Air Quality and Control: Lecture No. 5

This document discusses air quality and control. It defines clean air and lists the major components of air. It then discusses major air pollutants including particulates like dust, fume, mist, smoke and spray. It also discusses gaseous pollutants like carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Sources of air pollution include stationary combustion, transportation, industrial processes and solid waste disposal. The effects of air pollution on human health, acid rain, photochemical smog, ozone depletion and global warming are outlined. Methods to control particulates include settling chambers, cyclones, bag filters, spray towers and electrostatic precipitators. Control of gaseous pollutants includes wet scrubbers, adsorption

Uploaded by

Illumi Zaoldyeck
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LECTURE NO.

5
Air Quality and Control

 What is clean air?


 Pure air is a mixture of gases which
contains:
78.0% nitrogen
20.1% oxygen
0.9% argon
0.03% carbon dioxide
0.002% neon
0.0005% helium
 The easiest way to control air pollution is to
eliminate the source of the pollution.

Major Air Pollutants


1. Particulates
a. Dust
 Entrained by process gases
directly from the material
being handled or processes
(e.g. coal, ash and cement)
 Direct offspring of a parent
material undergoing a
mechanical operation (e.g.
sawdust from woodworking)
 Entrained materials used in a mechanical operation (e.g. sand
from sandblasting)
 Cement dust is about 100 micron
b. Fume
 Frequently a metallic oxide formed by the condensation of
vapors by sublimation, distillation, calcinations, or chemical
reaction processes.
 0.03 to 0.3 micron
c. Mist
 An entrained liquid particle formed by the condensation of a
vapor and perhaps by chemical reaction
 0.5 to 3.0 microns
d. Smoke
 Entrained solid particle formed as a
result of incomplete combustion of
carbonaceous materials.
 0.05 to 1 micron
e. Spray
 A liquid particle formed by the atomization of a parent liquid

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 Measurement: High-volume sampler (“hi-vol”) – operates much like a
vacuum cleaner by simply forcing more than 2000 cubic meters of air
through a filter in 24 hours. The analysis is gravimetric.
 The particulate concentration is referred to as
total suspended particulates (TSP)
 Respirable particulates are those particulates
less than 0.3 micron that would be respired into
the lungs
 PM10 is particulate matter smaller than 10 microns; used in the ambient
air quality standards

2. Gaseous Pollutants

 Gaseous pollutants include substances that


are gases at normal temperature and
pressure as well as vapors of substances
that are liquid or solid at normal
temperature and pressure.
 CO2, hydrocarbons, H2S, NOx’s, ozone,
VOC (volatile organic compounds and
SOx’s
 Measurement: micrograms per cubic meter or parts per million (ppm)
on volume to volume basis

Primary Air Pollutants – substances emitted directly to the atmosphere.


Secondary Air Pollutants – created by physical processes and chemical
reactions taking place in the atmosphere.
 Acrolein ( CH 2 CHOOH ), PAN (peroxy acetyl nitrate), formaldehyde,
PBzN (peroxybenzyl nitrate)

Sources of Air pollution


2. Sttionary combustion
 Particulate emissions such as fly ash
and smoke and sulfur and nitrogen
oxides.
3. Transportation
 From automobiles
 Particulate emissions such as smoke
and lead particles (or halogenated
compounds)
4. Industrial process
5. Solid-waste disposal sources
1. Backyard burning
2. Undesirable odor from inefficient
systems

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Effects of Air Pollution

1. Human health
 Air pollution effect to the human health is rather difficult to evaluate.
 Four of the most difficult problems in relating air pollution to health are
unanswered questions concerning:
(1) the existence of thresholds,
(2 the total body burden of pollutants,
(3) the time versus dosage problems, and
(4) synergistic effects of various combination of pollutants.
2. Acid Rain
 Uncontaminated rain has a pH of 5.6;
acid rain has a pH of 2 or lower.
 Production of acids (sulfuric, sulfurous
or nitric acids) from SOx’s and NOx’s in
the atmosphere
3. Photochemical Smog
 Results from the accumulation of
secondary pollutants in the
atmosphere
4. Ozone depletion
5. Global warming

Major Greenhouse Gases


 CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O , CCl 2 F2 (CFC 12), CHClF2 (HCFC 22), CF4
(perfluoromethane), SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride)

Control of Particulates
1. Settling chambers
 the simplest device for controlling particulates
 consists of wide places in the exhaust flue where larger particles
(>100 microns) can settle out
 usually with a baffle to slow the emission stream
2. Cyclone
 Dirty air is blasted into a conical cylinder, but off centerline
 Heavy solids will migrate to the wall of the cylinder and slide down
to be collected
 Clean air is in the middle of the cylinder and exits out at the top
3. Bag filters
 Also called fabric filters
 Operate like a common vacuum
cleaner
 Fabric bags will collect the dust which
must be periodically shaken out of it.
 Sensitive to temperature and humidity

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4. Spray towers
 Also known as scrubbers
 Disadvantages:
(1) production of a visible plume (water vapor)
(2) waste is now in liquid form
 The smaller gas bubbles or water droplets, the more effective the
gas scrubbing
5. Electrostatic precipitators
 Widely used in power plants
 Particle matter is removed by first being charged by electrons
jumping from one hi-voltage electrode to the other, and then
migrate to positively charged collecting electrode
 Effective in removing submicron particulates

Control of Gaseous Pollutants


1. Wet scrubbers
2. Adsorption
 Use of activated carbon
3. Incineration
 Also known as flaring
 Organic pollutant can be oxidized
to CO2 and water
 Variation: catalytic combustion –
temperature is controlled by
injecting catalysts that mediates
the reaction

Control of sulfur dioxide


1. change to low sulfur fuel
 natural gas and oil instead of coal
2. desulfurize the coal
 use of chemical treatment
3. employ tall stacks
 to disperse the SO2 emission
4. flue gas desulfurization
 use of lime or limestone

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