ICUC8 8th International Conference on Urban Climates, 6th-10th August, 2012, UCD, Dublin Ireland.

638: Active reduction of air pollutant concentrations at an urban square

Mrton Balcz*, Tams Lajos
Theodore von Krmn Wind Tunnel Laboratory, Department of Fluid Mechanics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary balczo@ara.bme.hu

Abstract An urban square, surrounded by buildings from all sides, has unfavourable ventilation and poor air quality when pollutants are emitted from streets crossing the square. The subject of this investigation (Jzsef Ndor Square in downtown Budapest) is heavily polluted with concentration levels well above limit values. Despite of this, an underground car park is planned to be built under the square, the exhaust of which might further increase local concentrations. To understand local flow and dispersion phenomena, CFD simulations were performed using the MISKAM microscale model [1] on the actual geometry of the square. The annual mean concentration measured at a nearby monitoring station agreed well with that from simulations. To decrease or, at least, to hold air pollution of the square constantly after its realization, the ventilation system of the car park was redesigned. Air needed for the internal ventilation will be sucked into the car park near the crossing road at the car park exit. This will remove highly polluted air from the square, and thus slightly reduce average pollution in the very close neighbourhood. After passing through the car park, the ventilation air will be released through a ventilation stack above rooftop level. The concept was checked using MISKAM simulations showing an average concentration decrease of about 4% at pedestrian level. Keywords: pollutant dispersion, CFD, ventilation, urban design, mitigation technique

1. Introduction
In the past two decades of microscale air pollution research, urban street canyons, street intersections, regular arrangements of building blocks gained the most attention when pollutant dispersion phenomena between a small group of buildings were in question (also known as street scale). This is mainly due to their high occurrence in the built urban areas and the high-level concentrations to be expected at them. Air pollution at urban squares was much less dealt with. Squares can be described as missing building blocks in the regular arrangement of blocks in a built-up area. Typical examples are shown in Fig. 1. Urban squares fulfil important functions in urban life: they facilitate playing and sporting grounds, dining opportunities, markets, open-air events. Longer residence time of pedestrians on these squares explains why even moderate air pollution is of importance. Nevertheless, dense car traffic in neighbouring streets of the square can cause remarkable pollution. The few papers devoted to flow and dispersion specially at urban squares include [2, 3]. Larger scale investigations of whole districts [4] also included the study of wind and concentration fields at squares. However no detailed analysis has been made on the flow and dispersion phenomena at an urban square so far.

Fig. 1. Left: Jzsef Ndor Square, Budapest; right: squares in the "Michel-Stadt" semi-idealised city [4]

2. Subject of investigation
Jzsef Ndor Square is surrounded by building blocks from all sides. Building heights vary between 25 and 40 m. Considering the annual -1 mean wind speed of 1.9 ms in the area, natural ventilation of the square is quite limited. High traffic density of the crossing street at the northern side of the square (approx. 36 000 vehicles/day) causes high concentrations of NOx, NO2 and PM10. An automatic measurement station at the neighbouring Erzsbet square (see

ICUC8 8th International Conference on Urban Climates, 6th-10th August, 2012, UCD, Dublin Ireland.

map in Fig. 3) measured concentrations exceeding the allowed values significantly, as shown in Fig. 2.

The simulation domain with extents of 1.4 x 1.44 x 0.5 km has been divided into 231 x 221x 54 (2.75 million) grid cells with horizontal cell sizes of 1.3 2.5m at the square. Traffic emissions are treated as line sources of NOx without vertical momentum. Simulations were performed for the 8 main wind directions with reference wind speed -1 of 2 ms at 10m height. Annual average concentrations were calculated based on the wind statistics. 3.3 Ventilation concepts Cars can access the planned car park from the northern side of the square through entry/exit ramps (Fig. 3.). According the original ventilation concept (1), the necessary ventilation air of the car park, prescribed by corresponding guidelines 3 -1 (about 100.000 m h ) is sucked in, and later released at ground level. In the afternoon rush-1 hour 26.5 g h NOx is produced inside of the car -1 park, which has to be added to the 106 g h released by cars at the crossing street on the square. This all together would lead to an unacceptable increase of concentration levels at the whole square. The improved concept (2) foresees the release of the polluted air above rooftop level through a ventilation stack in the yard of a surrounding building block. This solution can provide also an improvement of the outdoor air quality because: the ventilation of the square is increased artificially, when ventilation air inlets of the car park are located near the high traffic road, highly polluted air is removed from the square. In the improved ventilation concept, car park ventilation air is sucked in directly through the exit ramps. This active pollutant mitigation technique shows similarities with the Pedestrian Ventilation System proposed in [10].

Fig. 2. Averaged weekly NOx, NO2, PM10 time series at the Erzsbet Square measurement station in 2005

The local government planned to build an underground car park for about 500 cars underneath the square. The pollutant production from the car park and the additional traffic was supposed to further increase local emissions and thus, concentration values. To quantify the change of pollutant concentrations, the current air quality situation (year 2006) was analyzed by CFD, predictions for the at the time in-future situation 2010 had to be made, finally applicable solutions to a possible air quality improvement had to be found.

3. Methodology
3.1 Input data Traffic emissions were determined using traffic count data of the neighbouring streets, Hungarian car fleet composition statistics, and emission factors from the Handbook of Emission Factors HBEFA 2.1 [5]. The method adapted for Hungary is also described in [6]. The influence of larger scales on dispersion was taken into account as background concentrations acquired from ADMS-Urban model runs cited by a report of the local environmental agency [7]. Long-term wind statistics were only available at a station of the Hungarian Meteorological Service (HMS) about 2 km from the site. 3.2 CFD modelling The model MISKAM [1] (version 5.01) was used for microscale flow and dispersion modelling of the site. The RANS model applies a modified k- turbulence closure on a non-equidistant Cartesian grid of Arakawa-C type. Buildings are represented as blockouts from the grid. Dispersion of an inert pollutant is calculated afterwards by the advection-diffusion equation using the wind field simulation results. Vegetation effects can be accounted for by additional terms in the flow and turbulence equations. Details of the MISKAM model are given in more depth in also in [8]. The model was validated in several test cases, e.g. [9].

Fig. 3. Plan of Jzsef Ndor Square and ventilation concepts for the planned car park. Black lines with arrows show main traffic lanes. In the original concept (1) air is taken from the middle of the square and released at ground level. In the improved concept (2) air inlet is located at the ramp and released through a ventilation stack

ICUC8 8th International Conference on Urban Climates, 6th-10th August, 2012, UCD, Dublin Ireland.

4. Results and discussion

4.1 Original situation Annual average NOx concentrations are shown in Fig. 4 for the year 2010. As at the site winds coming from North to Northwest dominate, pollutants are spreading from the northern part of the square to the South. More than a half of the -3 square is above the annual limit of 70 g m . The concentration map for the year 2006 (not depicted in this paper) shows the same pattern with higher concentrations, which can be explained by the emission differences between the two reference years.

degree is shifted horizontally in the simulation, and at 0 degree it is strongly overestimated. An explanation for that can be besides errors caused by the CFD model the steep concentration gradient, in which the measurement station is located, and also the large distance of the wind measurements from the site, causing possibly a wind direction shift. When comparing annual mean concentrations in Fig. 6, simulated values lie inside a 15% error band. The trend of decreasing concentrations is well predicted by the simulation. Note that the first simulations were run in 2007, so background concentrations were supposed to remain constant and the prediction for the year 2010 was actually blind.

Fig. 4. Simulated NOx concentrations at pedestrian level for the year 2010 without car park built.

Fig 6. Annual average NOx concentrations measured at the monitoring station and simulated with MISKAM. Simulation results are shown with 15% error bars

1-hour average concentration data time series were available at the air quality station for the year 2006. After sorting the data points according wind direction, one gets Fig. 5. Data points are highly scattered, obviously due to the different wind speeds, emission source strength, atmospheric stability at the same wind direction. The CFD models performance was assessed by the comparison of wind direction averages.

4.2 Influence of car park on air quality Annual mean concentrations for the year 2010 with car park in operation are depicted in Fig. 7. For better understanding Fig 8. shows the change of annual mean concentrations due the car park in the year 2010. Negative numbers in Fig. 9 correspond to concentration decrease.

Fig. 5. Comparison of measured and simulated concentrations vs. wind direction at the monitoring station

While both measured and simulated curves show wind directional influence, and they lie in the same range, also significant differences can be found. The peak measured between 180 and 225

Fig. 7. Simulated NOx concentrations at pedestrian level for the year 2010 with underground car park using the improved ventilation concept

In the northwest corner, the additional traffic through the exit ramps is responsible for local rise of pollution level. Except of this limited area

ICUC8 8th International Conference on Urban Climates, 6th-10th August, 2012, UCD, Dublin Ireland.

however, an overall decrease can be observed in the middle and northeast part of the square, -3 reaching up to 21g m . At the southern end, concentration levels change only slightly.

5. Conclusions
At the closed urban square investigated, significant concentration differences and a NorthSouth concentration gradient were observed. By placing the air intake of the planned car park near the pollutant source, and releasing the polluted air from the car park above rooftop level, the outdoor air quality could be moderately improved at the square.

6. Acknowledgements
The support of the project "Development of quality-oriented and harmonized R+D+I strategy and functional model at BME", funded by the New Szchenyi Plan is gratefully acknowledged. (ID: TMOP-4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010-0002)

7. References
Fig. 8. Difference of annual mean NOx concentrations at pedestrian level when the car park is in operation. Note the sign of the contour labels, as colour scale is symmetric. White numbers in black boxes show the selected receptor points

The question arises if the plume from the ventilation stack (marked also on Fig. 3.) has any influence on the air quality of the square. As the stack is 32 m high and flow velocity was set to -1 7 m s , the plume elevates well into the atmospheric boundary layer flow above rooftop level, and pollutants are rapidly dispersed. No concentration increase could be detected at pedestrian level. To summarize the influence of the the car park with improved ventilation system, concentration changes at 11 receptor points, 9 of which can be found at the square, are listed in Table 1. For receptor point locations, see Fig. 8. Pollutant levels rise only in two points, in all other points at the square, an improvement of 6-9% is predicted.
Table 1. Annual mean NOx concentration change due to the planned underground car park with improved ventilation concept. Receptor NOx [gm-3], 2010 point w/o car park w car park 1 97 96 2 139 138 3 185 194 4 318 340 5 209 193 6 119 108 7 95 87 8 82 75 9 72 68 10 66 62 11 64 60 Points 3-11 (all points at the square) Change -1.1% -0.6% 4.6% 7.1% -7.6% -9.1% -8.7% -8.1% -5.7% -5.5% -6.0% -4.4%

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