Abstract
Contaminants and odor emissions are some of the major environmental problems that several industrial sites have to face. Particularly, complaints exhibited by the population living near plants characterized by both unpleasant odor emissions and hazardous contaminants dispersion (e.g. waste treatment and disposal plants, wastewater treatment plants, chemical industries, food industries, livestock activities, rendering plants, tanneries, etc.) are becoming more and more frequent, leading to the establishment of either legal suits (in the case of existing plants) or constraints with respect to the construction of new plants. Taking note of the importance of this feature, it is essential to provide industrial sites with easy-to- use software capable of evaluating the effects on the neighborhood of their atmospheric issuances. Therefore, the aim of this work has been the implementation of an integrated stationary – non steady state Gaussian modeling system (based on AERMOD and CALPUFF algorithms) which is able to simulate the dispersion of both contaminants and odors into an open field choosing automatically the most correct algorithm to be used. Its robustness and reliability has been tested using both AERMOD and CALPUFF simulations. The good agreement among the obtained results makes this software particularly suitable for an easy evaluation of the effects of a generic issuance onto the nearby environment without requiring a deep knowledge of the dispersion modeling system by the users.
