Volume 24 (Michael Westphal 2018)
Michael Westphal, 2018
Radon als Tracer in der
Luftqualitätsüberwachung
ISBN 978-3-86780-590-2
Abstract
Air pollution is one of the main environmental problems worldwide. Beside the emission the spread of air pollutants is affected by the shape of the earth surface, the land use and the meteorological conditions of the near surface atmosphere. In this conection the meteorological conditions are very difficult to estimate, because these conditions are a result of the combination of many variables which furthermore change in a short period. In practice the effect of clean air management can be calculate with models that computes the concentration of pollutants in ambient air with mean conditions of the near ground level atmosphere.
With this work are methods presented and discussed which use the naturally occurring noble gas Radon as a tracer in the atmospheric boundary layer. Measured data were analyzed with statistical methods and the Radon-Tracer-Method.
For a period of four years there were measured the air pollutants nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (PM10, PM2.5) and the tracer Radon. The measurement took place at an air quality control station in the urban background. Furthermore, there were used data from an urban traffic station at a high frequented main street (hot spot).
Correlation of Radon with meteorological data showed a high dependence especially for wind speed. The daily mean concentration of air pollutants showed the highest correlation with Radon (NO2: R2 = 0,23; PM10TEOM: R2 = 0,15; PM10HVS: R2 = 0,17; PM2.5HVS: R2 =0,13). Moreover, there was created a modell to predict Pasquill-classes with Radon-data. This modell achived a prediction till 93 % of the hour values. Further a method was developed to use the curruntly Radon concentration to describe the momentary exchange conditions. Furthermore, Radon data were used to decouple base concentration (rural background concentration) and local additional concentration of air pollutants. For this data of an urban background station were used. Also, with Radon data share of atmospheric exchange conditions and local emission was derived if environmental thresholds were exceeded. In addition,
the work gives an overview about using Radon as a tracer in meteorology science and air
quality management.