Effects of Varying Wind Angles and Increasing Concentration on Air Pollutant Dispersion from Cooling Towers to Urban Area using Computational Fluid Dynamics Software

Abstract

Managing and improving the air quality across urban areas can be achieved by studying the transport behaviour of air pollutants. In this work, the effects of varying wind angles and increasing concentration on air pollutant dispersion from cooling towers to urban area were investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software; OpenFOAM and the modified k-ω SST turbulence closure to acquire the steady-state flow field based on Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes Equation (RANS) approach. The results showed that varying the wind direction for the wind velocity profile from (1 0 0) to (Cos30 0 Sin30) and (Cos45 0 Sin45) affected the pollution dispersion across the urban area with the worst scenario being (1 0 0). In addition, reducing the diffusivity constant (Dt), thus increasing the pollution concentration, from 0.02 to 0.001 increased the pollution transport across the urban area considerably. This research shows the benefit of applying CFD approach toward managing the challenges of air pollution dispersion.