Air pollution assessment for regulatory purposes: a CFD approach design

In a context of atmospheric pollution levels on the rise, there is a growing interest in the use of pollutant dispersion tools, especially for regulatory purposes involving industrial activities. Environmental organizations from different countries legislate and encourage the use of different types of models capable to provide fast and robust results in many scenarios. However, these models are not suitable for certain complex conditions of pollutant dispersion, where CFD tools offer a powerful alternative to consider, despite their higher demands in terms of time and resources. In order to run accurate and reliable CFD simulations, some important steps must be carefully considered, such as the definition of an appropriate computational domain. As for the concerned scenario, the pollution impact assessment of industrial facilities, building such a geometrical domain poses specific challenges that are necessary to address. The present work identifies a case study of pollutant dispersion from an industrial source for which the use of CFD models is advised. A contribution is made towards the establishment of a systematic methodology for the development of CFD computational domains in the field of pollution impact assessment of industrial facilities.