Pollutant Dispersion in a Heavily Industrialized Region: Comparison of Different Models

The objective of this study is to analyse the meteorological fields and the dispersion patterns of different pollutants released by several types of industries on a heavily industrialized region located in the NE part of Spain. Petrochemical industries and several chemical plants are concentrated in an industrial park placed near the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea and close to a relatively high mountain range, facts which increase the complexity of the wind fields in the region and therefore of the resultant pollutant dispersion patterns. Numerical modelling has been carried out with two different models: the 3-D Urban Airshed Model with variable grid (UAM-V) (Biswas et al., 2001), implemented to MM5 meteorological model (Grell et al. 1994); and an Australian model TAPM ( Luhar and Hurley, 2003), which has its own photochemical module. The models have been run from the 7th to 9th of August 2003, during a summer ozone episode mainly characterized by a synoptic situation of high pressures which favour the development of mesoscale circulations forced by the topography. First results show how meteorological fields are certainly a critical component of the dispersion modeling systems because in this area local wind circulations are the main cause of the plume dispersion. In consequence, its evaluation is considered as a preliminary and an important point of this study. Afterwards a comparison between the dispersion patterns given by the two different photochemical is carried out and agreements and differences are analyzed.