Dispersion Modeling of Air Pollutants from the Ilam Cement Factory Stack

Today, the cement industry is one of the most air polluting industries in the world. With over seven decades of experience in the cement industry with a total annual production capacity of approximately seventy million tons, Iran is the largest producer of cement in the Middle East. Ilam cement factory is one of the major cement manufacturers in Iran. Hence in this study, owing to the importance and role of contaminants from the plant, appraisal of the emissions contribution in addition to other factors has been discussed. For this purpose, in the first place, the flow parameters and the suspended particles from stack outlet have been measured using appropriate equipment [1]. Then by applying AERMOD software, diffusion and dispersion of suspended particles in the surrounding area has been modeled [2]. Because of entering the suspended particles from the west of the country to the study area, in order to determine and evaluate the factory’s share of total available particles, the amount of particles in the atmosphere is measured at four points around the plant using SKC pump. By subtracting the measured amount of particles resulted from modeling from measured ones using SKC pump, Ilam cement factory's share percent, compared to other sources of pollution in the region, can be estimated 3]. Measuring the output suspended particulates from the stack and surrounding environment To achieve the research objectives, primarily the output suspended particles from the cement factory’s stacks should be measured by sampling. Thus output gas speed, temperature and pressure have been measured by applying the KIMO device and suspended particles have been assessed by using WESTECH. Table 1 shows the location of stacks in Cartesian coordinate system and local coordinate system [4]. AERMOD run Table 2 shows the maximum concentration for mean time at 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours, 2 hours, 1 month and 1 year. By comparison of results in a functional state (enabled simultaneously for all sources) which is presented in Table 2, whit proposed limit values for particulate emissions, it is well received that even though all of the plant sources are active, the maximum concentration for mean time at 24 hours and 1 year are much lower than clean air standards. As the satellite image (Fig. 1) shows, some areas such as Sarabeleh, Ilam, and Kovar are less affected by output particle emissions from cement plants. Although in comparison with other areas, Ivan district is more affected by pollution from these sources, it does not meet the limit proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. According to the presented results, the maximum concentration of particles originated from Ilam cement plant in all points is equal to 1 microgram per cubic meter occurred at a distance of 8900 m and 5300 m along the north-east direction.