Estimating fugitive dust emission rates using an environmental boundary layer wind tunnel

Emissions from fugitive dust due to erosion of “natural” wind-blown surfaces are an increasingly important part of PM10 (particulate matter with sizes of 10 μm aerodynamic diameter) emission inventories. These inventories are particularly important to State Implementation Plans (SIP), the plan required for each state to file with the Federal government indicating how they will comply with the Federal Clean Air Act (FCAA). However, techniques for determining the fugitive dust contribution to over all PM10 emissions are still in their developmental stages. In the past, the methods have included field monitoring stations, specialized field studies and field wind-tunnel studies. The measurements made in this paper allow for systematic determination of PM10 emission rates through the use of an environmental boundary layer wind tunnel in the laboratory. Near surface steady-state concentration profiles and velocity profiles are obtained in order to use a control volume approach to estimate emission rates. This methodology is applied to soils retrieved from the nation's single largest PM10 source, Owens (dry) Lake in California, to estimate emission rates during active storm periods. The estimated emission rates are comparable to those obtained from field studies and lend to the validity of this method for determining fugitive dust emission rates.