Determination of optimal air pollution control strategies

Abstract

A general theoretical framework for the determination of long-term air pollution control strategies for an airshed is presented. The problem is stated as determining the set of control measures to be exercised on airshed source emissions such that the total cost of control is minimized subject to the constraint of maintaining a certain level of air quality. It is assumed that a dynamic airshed simulation, model exists that is capable of describing atmospheric diffusion and chemical reaction, thus relating total mass emissions to atmospheric concentrations. The problem is based on the typical daily air pollution syndrome with air quality being defined as some function of the daily pollutant concentrations. It is shown that the overall optimization problem can be decomposed into two problems, the first, one of linear programming, the second, one of a dynamic optimization. The theory is illustrated by means of detailed hypothetical example of selecting air pollution controls for 1 yr.

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