Simulation of sulfate formation in the Mohave Power Project plume
- Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc., San Ramon, CA (United States)
The authors describe a modeling approach that combines detailed representations of plume dynamics and plume chemistry to determine the contribution of the Mohave Power Project (MPP), a large coal-fired facility in southern Nevada, to measured sulfate concentrations at two receptors (Meadview and Hopi Point) in the Grand Canyon National Park during a 11-day period in August, 1992. For developing the base case estimates of the MPP contribution, they used a number of conservative assumptions that maximized the conversion of MPP SO{sub 2} emissions to sulfate and ground-level sulfate concentrations. In addition, several hypothetical and/or plausible scenarios were constructed to develop plausible upper bound estimates of the impact of MPP. The maximum 12-hour average base case MPP sulfate concentration and sulfate contribution at Meadview were calculated to be 382 ng/m{sup 3} and 18.8%, respectively, for the 12-hour period from 7 p.m. August 14 to 7 a.m. August 15, 1992. The corresponding values for Hopi Point were about a factor of 3 lower than those at Meadview. Over the entire period, the estimated base case average MPP contribution to 12-hour average sulfate concentrations at Meadview was approximately 5%. For the entire period, there was little interaction of the MPP plume with clouds, except for a few hours on August 6, 1992. A hypothetical scenario was simulated for this day by increasing the frequency of plume-cloud interaction by a factor of 5 and increasing the background hydrogen peroxide concentration available to oxidize the plume SO{sub 2}. With this extreme scenario, the estimate for the MPP sulfate contribution for August 6 increased from 5% for the base case to approximately 18%, comparable to the maximum base case estimate of 19% for the August 14--15 period.
- OSTI ID:
- 361960
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-980632--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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