Karaca, FerhatKumisbek, AiganymInglezakis, Vassilis J.Azat, SeitkhanZhakiyenova, AlmagulOrmanova, GuldenGuney, Mert2021-12-282021-12-282021Karaca, F., Kumisbek, A., Inglezakis, V. J., Azat, S., Zhakiyenova, A., Ormanova, G., & Guney, M. (2020). DiMIZA : A dispersion modeling based impact zone assessment of mercury (Hg) emissions from coal‐fired power plants and risk evaluation for inhalation exposure. Engineering Reports, 3(7). https://doi.org/10.1002/eng2.12357http://nur.nu.edu.kz/handle/123456789/5970Coal-fired combined heat and power plants (CHPPs) serving large districts areamong the major sources of mercury (Hg) emissions globally, including Cen-tral Asia. Most CHPPs reside on the outskirts of urban areas, thus creating riskzones. The impact of atmospheric Hg levels on health is complex to establishdue to the site-specific nature of the relationship between CHPP emissions andhotspots (i.e., localized areas where Hg concentrations greatly exceed its back-ground value). However, a methodological identification of “emission impactzones” for atmospheric Hg emissions from CHPPs with potential adverse publichealth outcomes has not yet been fully studied. The present work suggests aneasy-to-use and cost-free impact zone identification method based on HYSPLITdispersion modeling for atmospheric Hg emissions from CHPPs. The dispersionmodeling based impact zone assessment, DiMIZA, merges short-term disper-sion runs (e.g., hourly) into long-term emission impacts (e.g., yearly), whichallows to identify the source impact zones. To perform a case study using thesuggested method, a CHPP plant in Nur-Sultan (capital of Kazakhstan) wasselected. First, traditional ad-hoc measurements were performed to identify thelevel of dispersions at ground level in different atmospheric stability character-istics. Then, HYSPLIT dispersion model was run for the same days and timesof those particular periods when the field measurements were performed. Themodel results were evaluated via a comparison with the ground measurementsand assessed for their atmospheric stability and diel conditions. Due to differ-ent emission loads in heating and non-heating periods, two separate pairs ofimpact zone maps were generated, and public Hg exposure health risks (acuteand chronic) were assessed.enAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United StatesType of access: Open Accessair pollutionatmospheric modelingatmospheric pollutioncoal combustionhuman healthHYSPLITpublic healthrisk characterizationArticle