Modelling of air micropollutant's fluctuations on the background of the primary air pollutants emission as a tool supporting environmental management in thermal power plant

Power industry belongs to those branches of the industry in Poland whose impact on the environment is extremely negative, especially due to the emission of different types of pollutants into atmosphere. Therefore, appropriate prevention or dealing with the threats to the natural environment is a key issue of the environmental management system in each thermal power plant. That involves planning, designing and implementation of such activities that may prevent or reduce air pollution emissions to the safe level. These activities should be directed not only on the primary air pollutants (CO2, CO, SO2, NOx and dust), but also micropollutants (Cl-2, Cu, Cr, Pb and F), which pose a serious threat to the natural environment, as well as peoples' health and life. In order to plan appropriate ventures aimed at reducing the micropollutants emissions, it is imperative to conduct the analysis of the micropollutants emissions size changeability in time. Seasonal patterns for micropollutants emissions in the thermal power plant, situated in the Silesian Region in Poland, is identified by using two of the seasonal adjustment time series methods (X-12-ARIMA and seasonal dummies model). Next, Markov switching models were estimated on the basis of monthly data from January 2006 to June 2012 (78months) in order to detect switches in volatility regimes of micropollutants emissions.