Quantifying particulate matter optical properties and flow rate in industrial stack plumes from the PRISMA hyperspectral imager

• Published in: Atmospheric measurement techniques Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 57 - 71
• Main Authors: Calassou, Gabriel, Foucher, Pierre-Yves, Léon, Jean-François
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 09.01.2024; European Geosciences Union; Copernicus Publications
• Subjects: Aerosol composition; Aerosol optical properties; Aerosol particles; Aerosols; Air pollution; Air sampling; Analysis; Atmosphere; Carbon; Coal; Coal-fired power plants; Emissions; Engineering Sciences; Extractive metallurgy; Factories; Flow rates; Fossil fueled power plants; Gas flaring; Gases; Heavy metals; Hyperspectral imaging; Industrial areas; Industrial plant emissions; Industrial sites; Mass flow rate; Metallurgy; Oil wells; Optical properties; Optical thickness; Outdoor air quality; Particulate emissions; Particulate matter; Particulate matter sources; Physics; Plumes; Pollutants; Power plants; Radiative transfer; Satellite observation; Soot; Steel-works; Suspended particulate matter; Water pollution; China; Algeria; aérosol; plume; hyperspectral imaging; panache; aerosol; imagerie hyperspectrale
• ISSN: 1867-8548; 1867-1381; 1867-8548
• DOI: 10.5194/amt-17-57-2024

Industrial activities such as metallurgy, coal and oil combustion, cement production, and petrochemistry release aerosol particles into the atmosphere. We propose analyzing the aerosol composition of plumes emitted by different industrial stacks using PRISMA (PRecursore IperSpettrale della Missione Applicativa) satellite hyperspectral observations. Three industrial sites have been observed: a coal-fired power plant in Matla, South Africa (imaged on 25 September 2021); a steel plant in Wuhan, China (24 March 2021); and gas flaring at an oil extraction site in Hassi Messaoud, Algeria (9 July 2021). Below-plume surface reflectances are constrained using a combination of PRISMA and Sentinel-2/MSI images. Radiative transfer simulations are performed for each scene including the surface, background atmosphere, and plume optical properties. The plume aerosol optical thickness (AOT), particle radius, volume of coarse-mode aerosol, and soot are then retrieved within the plumes following an optimal estimation framework. The mean plume retrieved AOT at 500 nm ranges between 0.27 and 1.27 and the median radius between 0.10 and 0.12 µm. We found a volume fraction of soot of 3.6 % and 10.4 % in the sinter plant and coal-fired plant plumes, respectively. The mass flow rate of particulate matter at a point source estimated by an integrated mass enhancement method varies from 840 ± 155 g s−1 for the flaring emission to 1348 ± 570 g s−1 at the coal-fired plant.