Chinese industrial air pollution emissions based on the continuous emission monitoring systems network
2023-03-22
As the world’s largest industrial producer, China has generated large amount of industrial atmospheric pollution, particularly for particulate matter (PM), SO2 and NOx emissions. A nationwide, time-varying, and up-to-date air pollutant emission inventory by industrial sources has great significance to understanding industrial emission characteristics. Here, we present a nationwide database of industrial emissions named Chinese Industrial Emissions Database (CIED), using the real smokestack concentrations from China’s continuous emission monitoring systems (CEMS) network during 2015–2018 to enhance the estimation accuracy. This hourly, source-level CEMS data enables us to directly estimate industrial emission factors and absolute emissions, avoiding the use of many assumptions and indirect parameters that are common in existing research. The uncertainty analysis of CIED database shows that the uncertainty ranges are quite small, within ±7.2% for emission factors and ±4.0% for emissions, indicating the reliability of our estimates. This dataset provides specific information on smokestack concentrations, emissions factors, activity data and absolute emissions for China’s industrial emission sources, which can offer insights into associated scientific studies and future policymaking.
Background & Summary
China has been suffering from severe air pollution1. Industrial sectors contributed the majority of China’s air pollutant emissions, representing 72.8–86.1%, 74.3–91.0% and 40.7–79.1% of national anthropogenic particulate matter (PM, comprising all PM particle sizes)1,2, sulphur dioxide (SO2)1,2,3 and nitrogen oxide (NOX)1,2,3 emissions, respectively, between 2010 and 2018. These air pollutants constituted the primary precursors of PM2.5 (PM with an aerodynamic diameter within 2.5 μm) pollution, which poses severe environmental problems and public health burden
Scientific Data, 22-03-23
; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-023-02054-w