E!3266 WEBAIR: The project consortium

Institute of Physica, LITHUANIA

Contribution to the Project

The main task of the group will be the development of an air quality impact management system for industrial plants by taking into consideration the characteristics of these industrial plants on emissions and processes. The system will work in real time and will allow to take appropriate actions on industrial production to avoid the exceedences on pollution concentrations when the main reason is due to industrial activities and no other alternative method is envised. Activities will include:

the improvement of methods and emission factors for the generation of industrial emission data;
the assessment of the accuracy and the validation of emission data;
the development and improvement of tools that generate emission data for atmospheric models.

Expertise

The research activities carried out at the laboratory concentrate on the factors determining the formation, transport, chemical transformation and deposition of various pollutants as well as their impact on the ecosystems. Recent work has concentrated on the study of dynamics of gaseous (NH3, HNO3, SO2, NOX, O3, CO2, H2S, etc.) as well as particulate (SO42-, NO3-, Cl-, NH4+, Na+, Ca2+, K+, B(a)P, etc) pollutants in the atmosphere and on the evaluation of biosphere/atmosphere exchange fluxes of photo-oxidants, acidifying substances and persistent organic pollutants. This research contributed to the EC projects 'Baltic Sea System Study' and 'The Transport and Chemical Transformation of Environmentally Relevant Trace Constituents in the Troposphere over Europe and others. Furthermore, the latest data on the deposition fluxes of sulphuric and nitrogen compounds have been used in the calculations of the exceedances of critical loads for sulphur and nitrogen in Lithuanian forest ecosystems. This work has been performed in close collaboration with the Lithuanian Ministry of Environment, and obtained data will serve as a basis for the future development of emission control strategies in Lithuania.