Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Evaluation of the effect of mobile source emissions on ozone formation in Memphis, Tennessee

Conference ·
OSTI ID:250893
 [1]; ;  [2]
  1. State of Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Nashville, TN (United States). Div. of Air Pollution Control
  2. Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering
In 1991, there were three ozone nonattainment areas in Tennessee, of which the Memphis area was designated as `marginal` by the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 and had a compliance date of 1993. The Memphis area violated the ozone NAAQS ten times during 1986--1988. A comprehensive emission inventory of ozone precursors was developed followed by modeling the ozone formation in order to enhance the assessment of the future compliance with the ozone standard. A modeling study was done by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering using EPA`s Urban Airshed Model (UAM). The UAM is an air quality simulation model, developed by Systems Application, Inc., used to analyze the ozone air quality. The UAM was run for the Memphis area using a 1988 emission inventory and representative meteorological data based on the ten highest ozone violation days during 1986--1988. The ozone concentrations predicted by the model were analyzed and compared to actual observed concentration data to validate the model. A sensitivity analysis was conduced to determine the contribution of specific source categories to ozone formation and to gain insight into the probable reasons for the violations of the ozone standards. The main objective of this paper is to present different steps of UAM model application development and to understand and analyze the model results. This paper includes the analysis of the effect of emissions from mobile sources, which include large amounts of VOC and NO{sub x} emissions, on ozone formation in Memphis area.
OSTI ID:
250893
Report Number(s):
CONF-9507204--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English