Assessment of Air Quality for Selected Locations in Chittagong City Corporation Area, Bangladesh

M A Hossen; S K Pal; A Hoque

Abstract

Air quality is one of the important environmental components that must be assessed. This paper provides an overview of air quality in Chittagong city as well as an evaluation of air contaminant emissions, air quality trends. The ambient air quality data for particulate matter as well as criteria of gaseous pollutants were congregated for 2013 to 2015. Analysis manifested that during April to October, 24 hour average concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 were within the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) level, while it accelerated about three times of NAAQS during the whole non-monsoon period (November to March). The other gaseous pollutants such as SO2 , NO2 , O3 and CO remain decent within the permissible limit except dry non-monsoon period. The gradual increase of yearly average Air Quality Index (AQI) value indicates the air pollution turns up over the years in Chittagong city. The main responsible pollutant for pollution is found as PM2.5. In this study, emission inventory model has been also developed for five pollutants, namely PM10, PM2.5, SOx , NOx and CO, considering vehicular emission in Chittagong city. It is found that diesel driven vehicles (i.e. buses, trucks) release significant percent of emission which is about 77 percent of total emission (5264.08 tons/year). The amount of emission about 300 (tons/km/year) for the road aligned from Dewanhat to GEC circle is appeared to be the most polluted road sites than the other roads considered illustrating higher ADT and confined nature of road sites.

Keywords

Air quality; emissions; pollutants; emission inventory

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Cites this article as

M. A. Hossen, S. K. P. , A. H. , "Assessment of Air Quality for Selected Locations in Chittagong City Corporation Area, Bangladesh", International Journal of Innovative Research in Engineering & Management (IJIREM), Vol-5, Issue-4, Page No-121-128, 2018. Available from: