Aviation is known to have a large contribution to the local concentrations of ultrafine particles (UFP), particles smaller than 100 nanometer. The goal of this study commissiond by the Flanders Environment Agency was to map the UFP concentrations near the airport and study the contributions of both road transport as well as airport activities on these concentrations.
A detailed air quality model has been constructed to model the UFP concentrations. A literature review of the UFP-emissions of road transport and aviation highlighted the large uncertainties on these emissions.
In 2015, VITO has conducted campaigns to measure UFP at locations close to Brussels Airport. These measurement results have been applied to calibrate the UFP emissions. The emission model starts from individual airplane trajectories up to 5000 feet and locations at the tarmac.
These emissions together with the contributions of road transport are applied as input of the dispersion model yielding annual average UFP concentration map and the sectoral contributions split over the different airport activities, road transport and the background concentrations. An interactive viewer is configured to analyze the results in a wider area of 20 km around the airport.
Client: Flemish Environment Agency (VMM)
Year: 2016 - 2018
Keywords: policy support, nitrogen deposition, ammonia, agriculture, road transport, web based tools
ultra fine particle source apportionment tool
