WashU study could help manage air quality near power plants
Chi Li to use NASA grant to retrain tool to provide air quality data
As national electricity needs grow, air quality managers need information on air quality in areas where new power plants are proposed.
A team of researchers, led by Chi Li, a research assistant professor in the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, plans to fine-tune a tool that will be trained to understand how weather and atmospheric conditions evolve over time with a two-year, $496,121 grant from NASA.
The tool, Prithvi WxC, is a NASA foundation model that has learned weather patterns in how pollutants move and settle. Li and his collaborators, including Randall V. Martin, the Raymond R. Tucker Distinguished Professor, plan to retrain parts of the model so it can combine data from satellites, weather reanalysis and emissions records to produce monthly, nationwide maps of ground-level pollution. The maps will provide the background pollution data needed by AERMOD, a tool used by U.S. regulators to evaluate how pollution from urban and industrial sources spreads through the air, particularly in locations that lack monitoring stations.
Li said the project could provide more accurate and widely available air pollution data across rural areas of the United States where new power plants are more likely to be built, which would provide evidence for permitting decisions.
“Prithvi WxC is built on physical principles governing how the atmosphere evolves, so it can generate pollution estimates faster and at lower computational cost than traditional air quality simulation methods,” Li said.
In addition to Li and Martin, additional collaborators include Tracey Holloway at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Electric Power Research Institute, which works with utilities on challenges to electric permitting.
If successful, the project could give communities and regulators better air pollution information, especially in rural areas, and help support both cleaner air and a more reliable power grid, Li said.
