Emission modelling of hazardous air pollutants from road transport at urban scale

Abstract

This study is focused on the development of a modelling approach to quantify emissions of traffic-related hazardous air pollutants in urban areas considering complex road network and detailed data on transport activity. In this work a new version of the Transport Emission Model for line sources has been developed for hazardous pollutants (TREM-HAP). Emission factors for benzene, 1,3-butadiene, formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acrolein, naphthalene and also particulate matter (PM2.5) were implemented and the model was extended to integrate a probabilistic approach for the uncertainty quantification using Monte-Carlo technique. The methodology has been applied to estimate road traffic emissions in Porto Urban Area, Portugal. Hourly traffic counts provided by an automatic counting system were used to characterise the spatial and temporal variability of the number of vehicles, vehicle categories and average speed at different road segments. The data for two summer and two winter months were processed to obtain probability density functions of the input parameters required for the uncertainty analysis. For quantification of cold start excess emissions, Origin-Destination matrix for daily trips was used as additional input information. Daily emissions of hazardous air pollutants from road traffic were analysed for the study area. The uncertainty of the emission estimates related to the transport activity factors range from as small as −2 to +1.7% for acrolein and acetaldehyde on highways, to as large as −33 to +70% for 1,3-butadiene considering urban street driving. An important contribution of cold start emissions to the total daily values was estimated thus achieving 45% in case of benzene. The uncertainty in transport activity data on resulting urban emission inventory highlights the most important parameter and reveals different sensitivity of the emission quantification to the input data. The methodology presented in this work allows the development of emission inventories for hazardous air pollutants with high spatial and temporal resolution in complex urban areas required for air quality modelling and exposure studies and could be used as a decision support tool.

First Published Online: 19 Sep 2012

Keyword : road traffic emissions, hazardous air pollutants, air toxics, emission modelling, emission uncertainty