Harbour of Ravenna: The contribution of harbour traffic to air quality

Ravenna is one of the main Italian ports and has assumed a leadership position in Italy for some products and markets. The commercial harbour and the adjacent industrial area are very important for the economic system of Ravenna but, at the same time, they are highly critical areas. In particular, on average 8000 ships per year pass through the harbour of Ravenna, influencing air quality in harbour environment. The paper originates from a study about the contribution of different sources of air pollution in Ravenna and its aim is to evaluate the maritime traffic contribution to the air quality in the port area and to determine the suitability of an urban air quality model to support the air quality management in Ravenna. NOx and PM are selected as modelled pollutants. The study is made up of two parts. The first deals with the evaluation of annual emission of PM10 and NOx coming from ships through a standard European methodology while in the second we simulated the diffusion of these pollutants in the whole area. In order to evaluate the capability of the model to treat maritime traffic emissions, we compared hour-by-hour simulated concentrations with data collected by a fixed monitoring station located near the Candiano Canal. NOx concentrations obtained by short- and long-term simulations show a good match with the values measured by the fixed monitoring station, located in the centre of harbour area, and these results are also supported by FA2 performance index. Instead the omission of the secondary particulate and the contribution of other sources of particulate matter in the port area are probably the most important causes of the PM10 underestimation. The worse results obtained according to the performance indexes indicate the need to consider the formation and transport of secondary particulate matter in order to obtain more reliable predictions. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.