Predicting the non-carcinogenic health hazards associated with emissions from developing coal-fired power plants in Payr
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Predicting the non-carcinogenic health hazards associated with emissions from developing coal-fired power plants in Payra, Bangladesh Mashiat Hossain 1 & Tanvir Ahmed 1 & Muhammad Ashraf Ali 1 Received: 17 April 2020 / Accepted: 27 July 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Owing to the depletion of natural gas reserves and economic constraints of imported oil, Bangladesh plans on shifting to an electricity mix dominated by coal. Among a number of planned coal-fired power plants, five power plants each with 1320-MW generation capacity are expected to be installed by 2030 in areas within 5-km radius of Payra, situated in Patuakhali district, by 2030. This study involved simulation of pollutant concentration and evaluation of health risks due to emission from these power plants. Four pollutants, SO2, NOx, PM2.5, and PM10, were assessed for health risks under two scenarios: (a) scenario I, operation of Payra phase I and phase II power plants (expected by 2022); and (b) scenario II, cumulative operation of all 5 power plants. An air dispersion model has been used to investigate the pollutant dispersion and ground-level concentration at receptor grids over a 30 × 30-km model domain for a 1-year period. Hazard quotients (HQ) of the selected pollutants were estimated at 10 sensitive receptors, which revealed that long-term HQ were well below the safe limits; however, short-term NOx exposure might pose serious threat to the residents. To depict the cumulative hazardous footprint of the pollutants, a hazard impact map has been created to delineate the potential high-risk areas. Keywords Coal-fired power plants . Air pollutants . Hazard quotient . Non-cancer risk . Air dispersion modeling
Introduction Challenged to ensure stable and universal access to electricity at affordable prices, many developing countries like Bangladesh are shifting to an electricity mix dominated by coal-fired power generation. Fossil fuel has always been a major contributor to the energy sector in Bangladesh, accounting for 95% of power generation in 1995 to almost 99% in 2015 (Climate Analytics 2019). Even though coal had a minor share of 1.7% in electricity production in 2015, economic constraints of imported oil and exhaustion of natural gas reserves resulted in the shifting of the primary energy focus to coal. Bangladesh is aspiring to become a high-income country by 2041, and has developed a power system master plan (GoB Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-020-00890-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Muhammad Ashraf Ali [email protected] 1
Department of Civil Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh
2016) in line with this goal. Currently, the country has a combined installed generation capacity of over 16,000 MW; gas accounts for 60.9%, fuel oil (furnace and diesel) about 30%, coal 3.3%, and hydropower accounts for about 1.4% of this generation (BPDB 2018). According to the power ma
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