A reactive transport model for air pollutants

Abstract

A general solution of coupled diffusion-reaction equations governing the spatial and temporal evolution of an arbitrary number of inter-reacting air pollutants has been developed. Although the present reaction chemistry is just limited to gas-phase pseudo-first-order process, the solution is of use to determine the reaction rate constants of complex reaction paths consisting of successive-, reversible-, cyclic-, and concurrent-reaction. Transport parameters (diffusion and advection) of the air pollutants are also involved in this solution. Moreover, equilibrium concentrations (or number densities) of all the air pollutants can be determined using a dynamic equilibrium solution (steady state solution) derived from the balance condition between their transport and reaction processes. For an appropriate model analysis, we have examined a toluene chemistry model that comprises ten related chemicals with twenty-six reaction rate constants under normal urban area conditions. © 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.