Prediction of air pollution around heavily industrialised areas: Use of the industrial source complex short-term model with emissions from a large number of sources

Sulphur dioxide has been used as the model industrial pollutant in a study of the effectiveness of using the Industrial Source Complex Short Term (ISCST) model to predict the temporal and spatial dispersion of a single pollutant from a large number of emission sources in a highly industrialised area. All important meteorological parameters have been included in the model, each being measured every five minutes over twelve months and then averaged on a monthly basis. Whilst the Shuaiba Industrial Area (SIA) of Kuwait (containing 183 sources of SO₂) together with its surrounding environment has been used in a year-long case study, the subject matter of this paper has a general applicability to all industrialised areas. Trends in the predicted monthly average pollutant concentrations are found to compare favourably with experimental values obtained at a single monitoring station located within SIA. The predicted and actual temporal locations of two maxima and two minima are coincident. Quantitative agreement between monthly average predicted and measured concentrations is excellent for seven months and reasons are provided for the differences for the remaining five months of the study, especially for July when the demand for air conditioning in Kuwait is expected to be high. The principal weakness in this evaluation of the effectiveness of the ISCST model has been the need to use SO₂ emission rates averaged over the year, rather than on a monthly basis. Despite this shortcoming, the ISCST model has been used to plot isopleths of SO₂ concentration for SIA and its surrounding environment. Such information is invaluable not only for locating areas at risk of approaching or exceeding World Health Organisation guideline ground-level concentrations, but also for studying the most practicable ways of making improvements to local ground-level air quality. The ISCST model can also be used to study future scenarios that include increased energy demand and increased industrial activity in a heavily industrialised region.