Development of a spatialized atmospheric emission inventory for the main industrial sources in Brazil

In this work, atmospheric pollutant emissions of NO_x, SO_x, CO, particulate matter (PM), total organic compounds (TOC), and CO₂ from larger stationary sources of pollutants in Brazil were inventoried and spatialized over the whole Brazilian territory for the base year 2011. The developed inventory comprises a total of 16 refining units, 1730 thermoelectric power plants (TPPs), 96 cement industries, and 64 paper and cellulose industries. To obtain the dataset, some strategies were used, including mail contact, official datasets, personal requesting, web maps usage, and official industry websites. The emission factors were based on lower and upper limits proposed by the AP-42 standards of the US Environmental Protection Agency - USEPA, as well as, emission factors provided by air pollution control agencies, industries, and those identified in the scientific literature. The results show values of 857 ± 415 Gg/year for NO_x, 1.51 ± 1.23 Tg/year for SO_x, 21.2 ± 13.7 Tg/year for CO, 10.4 ± 10.1 Tg/year for PM, 1.14 ± 0.95 Tg/year for TOC, and 476 ± 142 Tg/year for CO₂. In comparison with the official vehicular emission inventory provided by the Ministry of Environment for the year 2011, the total NO_x emissions estimated in this work were slightly lower than vehicular emissions, while SO_x was 300 times greater than vehicular emissions. For CO, the stationary emissions inventoried were around 17 times greater than vehicular emissions, while PM was approximately 360 times greater than those from vehicles. In terms of comparison with existing global databases, the estimates of this work showed a good level of agreement with the pollutants estimated by the Global Emissions EDGAR v4.3.1, except for PM and CO, which were higher in our estimates. The major contribution of the proposed inventory lies in its improved spatialized distribution, higher resolution, and greater distinctness about the high level of uncertainty associated with the emission inventories for the region.