Characterize air toxics impacts from ethanol-gasoline vehicles in urban area by AERMOD modeling

The potential impact on ambient air concentration caused by organic air toxics (benzene and formaldehyde) from gasoline vehicles while using ethanol-blended gasoline as fuel in an urban area in Taiwan was studied. Emission factor model and air quality model were used to estimate emission factors and simulate ambient air toxics concentration in various ethanol-blend scenarios, respectively. Using ethanol gasoline to motorcycles showed a lower emission of two air toxics than when applied to gasoline light-duty cars or trucks. Simulation using AERMOD revealed that the great improvement of annual average concentrations of airborne organic air toxics was in the downtown area while using E15 as fuel as compared to those from commercial gasoline. Case 1 (all motorcycles use E15 and other gasoline cars use G95) showed the largest reduction compared with those of the base case (all vehicles use commercial gasoline as fuel). This is an abstract of a paper presented at the A&WMA's 109th Annual Conference & Exhibition (New Orleans, LA 6/20-23/2016).