A finite difference model for air pollution simulation

Abstract

A 3-D model for atmospheric pollutant transport is proposed considering a set of coupled convection–diffusion–reaction equations. The convective phenomenon is mainly produced by a wind field obtained from a 3-D mass consistent model. In particular, the modelling of oxidation and hydrolysis of sulphur and nitrogen oxides released to the surface layer is carried out by using a linear module of chemical reactions. The dry deposition process, represented by the so-called deposition velocity, is introduced as a boundary condition. Moreover, the wet deposition is included in the source term of the governing equations using the washout coefficient. Before obtaining a numerical solution, the problem is transformed using a terrain conformal coordinate system. This allows to work with a simpler domain in order to build a mesh that provides finite difference schemes with high spatial accuracy. The convection–diffusion–reaction equations are solved with a high order accurate time-stepping discretization scheme which is constructed following the technique of Lax and Wendroff. Finally, the model is tested with a numerical experiment in La Palma Island (Canary Islands).