Assessment of the landfill fires impact on atmospheric air quality Ocena wpływu pożarów składowisk odpadów na stan jakości powietrza atmosferycznego
Creators: name: Bihałowicz, Jan Stefan
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: Fire, as a source that influences air quality, results in an increase in the concentration of pollutants in their closest neighborhood as well as at distant places, due to the atmospheric dispersion of pollutants. The increase in the concentration of these pollutants will be higher if the mass emitted in a fire would be greater, i.e., it depends on the size of the fire and on the material that is burned. In the last ten years in Poland, around 10% of fires bigger than 1000 m² were landfill and waste fires, while in 2018 it was almost a quarter of all biggest fires were landfill and waste fires. Therefore, research on the assessment of the impact of landfill fires on atmospheric air quality was started. The thesis is prepared as a collection of <strong>10</strong> thematically coherent scientific papers: <strong>1</strong> Bihałowicz, J. <em>J. Ecol. Eng.</em> 23, 147–157 (2022) <strong>2</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>et al.</em> <em>Waste Management</em> 125, 182–191 (2021) <strong>3</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>et al.</em> <em>Environmental Research Letters</em> 16, 104026–104026 (2021) <strong>4</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>Science. Business. Society.</em> 6, 11–14 (2021) <strong>5</strong> Rogula-Kozłowska, W. <em>et al.</em> <em>ZN SGSP</em> 83, 33–43 (2022) <strong>6</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. in <em>Współczesne problemy ochrony środowiska – wybrane aspekty</em> (2021) <strong>7</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>ZN SGSP</em> 81, 7–28 (2022) <strong>8</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>et al.</em> <em>Aerosol Air Qual. Res.</em> 22, 220172 (2022) <strong>9</strong> Bihałowicz, J. S. <em>et al.</em> <em>Materials</em> 15, 152–152 (2021) <strong>10</strong> Rogula-Kozłowska, W. <em>et al.</em> in <em>11th International Aerosol Conference IAC2022 4‑9 September 2022 Abstract Book</em> (2022) Two hypotheses and three research aims were determined. The first hypothesis was <em>Emission from big or very big landfill fire significantly influences the concentration of PM₁₀ in atmospheric air.</em> In order to verify this hypothesis, firstly, the analysis of the fire evidence and literature studies were conducted. It was shown at the beginning, that there are only a few works concerning the topic, mainly case studies. The results of the analysis of the fire database were presented in <strong>paper</strong> <strong>1</strong>. It covered the landfill fires in Poland in the years 2012-2021. In the work, three main topics were discussed: localization of fires, expenditure of water and foams, and preliminary estimates of atmospheric emission of selected pollutants. In <strong>paper 2</strong> the framework of the atmospheric impact assessment of landfill fires methodology was developed. The methodology is based on the analysis of the fire database, the determination of the mass of emitted different pollutants with uncertainties, and the idea of using HYSPLIT software to determine the atmospheric dispersion of pollutants. Applying this methodology, the emission from each of the 79 waste fires in 2018 were determined. The share of emission of particulate matter PM₁₀ from waste fires in 2018 in total yearly emissions in Poland was 2.17%, the share of carbon monoxide emission from waste fires was 0.84% of total yearly emissions while shares of sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and methane were smaller than 0.2%. The calculated amount of emitted particulate matter was the basis for the simulation in HYSPLIT. Data about the date and time of fire together with the determined mass of PM were the input for the creation of 79 maps of plume dispersion presented in <strong>paper</strong> <strong>3</strong>. It was the first time when scientific article discussed all fires in a given area and a specific, longer time in so detailed way, more precisely in Poland in 2018. Maps were analyzed using GIS software. Landfill fires caused the increase in the concentration of PM₁₀ of 1, 10, 100, 1 000, and 10 000 µg/m³ for at least one hour in areas 2306 thousand km², 641 thousand km², 59 thousand km², 5666 km², and 17 km² respectively. Moreover, it was proven, that three parameters are required to describe the impact of fire: area with concentration increase, number of people living in this area, and distance from the place of fire to the most distant point with concentration increase. This methodology was applied in <strong>paper 4</strong> to analyze the dispersion of methane, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide emitted in two selected fires in 2018 and in <strong>paper 5</strong> to analyze the dispersion of 23 selected pollutants emitted from a municipal waste fire. The second hypothesis verified in this work was: <em>Impact of a big or very big fire on the</em> <em>concentration of </em><em>PM₁₀ can be determined using machine learning models of concentrations measured at air quality monitoring stations and using modeling of emitted particles’ trajectories.</em> The possibilities of modeling concentrations using different machine learning models based on meteorological data were described in <strong>paper 7</strong>. In the paper, the impact of waste fire in Szczecin in the neighborhood of the air quality monitoring station was revealed as the underestimation of concentrations predicted by best-performing machine learning models. The verification that the concentrations during fires are higher than predicted was conducted in <strong>paper 8</strong>. Analysis of localization of 1.3 million fires in Poland in the years 2012‑2021 and analysis of dispersion from <strong>paper 3</strong> showed that during the fires concentrations of PM₁₀, benzene, and toluene were underestimated by the models. <strong>Papers 9 and 10</strong> were discussing the properties of PM emitted in waste fires. In experiments, the number and mass size distribution of particulates emitted from test fires. In <strong>paper 9</strong> new mathematical approach to determine the density of PM, assuming that the distributions are log-normal. The approach allowed to determine the relative densities of particulates described by the different log-normal distributions through the comparison of distributions measured in gravimetric analysis and in electric analysis in impactor. Temporal variability of parameters of number and mass size distributions during test fire, extinguishing, and after the fire was presented in <strong>paper 10</strong>. In this thesis, two hypotheses were verified and three research aims were accomplished. It provided new information about the impact of landfill fires on atmospheric air quality. No comprehensive methodology of assessment of the impact of waste fires other than presented in this work has been developed hitherto. The finishing of the thesis cannot be treated as exhaustion of the subject but as the new opening, especially new possibilities of the developed atmospheric fire impact assessment methodology.