A simplified chemistry module for atmospheric transport and dispersion models: Proof-of-concept using SCIPUFF

An atmospheric chemistry module was developed to predict the fate of environmentally hazardous compounds discharged into the atmosphere. The computationally efficient model captures the diurnal variation within the environment and in the degradation rates of the released compounds, follows the formation of toxic degradation products, runs rapidly, and in principle can be integrated with any atmospheric transport and dispersion model. To accomplish this, a detailed atmospheric chemistry mechanism for a target toxic industrial compound (TIC) was reduced to a simple empirical effective degradation rate term (keff). Empirically derived decay functions for keff were developed as a function of important meteorological parameters such as solar flux, temperature, humidity, and cloud cover for various land uses and locations by statistically analyzing data generated from a detailed chemistry mechanism run over a wide range of (typical) atmospheric conditions. 1-Butene and two degradation products (propanal and nitrooxybutanone) were used as representative chemicals in the algorithm development for this proof-of-concept demonstration of the capability of the model. The quality of the developed model was evaluated via comparison with experimental chamber data and the results (decay rates) compared favorably for ethene, propene, and 1-butene (within a factor of two 75% or more of the time).