Utilizing TEMPO surface estimates to determine changes in emissions, community exposure and environmental impacts from cement kilns across North America using alternative fuels

Abstract:

A major problem faced by all North American (NA) Governments is managing solid waste from residential and non-residential sources. One way to mitigate the need to expand landfill sites across NA is waste diversion for use as alternative fuel in industries such as cement manufacture. Currently, waste plastic, tires, waste shingles and other high carbon content waste destined for landfill are being explored, or currently used, as an alternative supplemental fuels for use in cement kilns across NA. While this is an attractive, environmentally sustainable solution, significant knowledge gaps remain in our fundamental understanding of whether these alternative fuels may lead to increased air pollution emissions from cement kilns across NA. The long-term objective of using TEMPO is to advance fundamental understanding of uncharacterized air pollution emissions and to assess the actual or potential environmental and health impacts of these emissions from cement kilns across NA. TEMPO measurements will be made in concert with in-situ observations augmented by air dispersion, land-use regression and receptor modelling. This application of TEMPO follows on from current research on a series of bench scale and pilot studies for Lafarge Canada Inc., that investigated the change in combustion emissions from various mixtures of coal (C), petroleum coke (PC) and non-recyclable alternative fuels. From our work we demonstrated that using an alternative fuel mixture in a cement kiln has potential to reduce emissions of CO₂ by 34%; reduce NO_x by 80%, and reduce fuel SO₂ emissions by 98%. We also provided evidence that there would be a significant reduction in the formation of secondary ground-level ozone (O₃) and secondary PM_2.5 in downwind stack plumes if alternative waste derived fuels are used. The application of air dispersion, source apportionment, land use regression; together with remote sensing offers a powerful set of tools with the potential to improve air pollution community exposure research in NA. The application of the new NASA TEMPO satellite to track the dispersion of SO2, PM2.5 and NO2 in plumes and secondary O3 and aerosol formation downwind of cement kilns opens up an exciting new avenue of air pollution research in NA.