Abstract
Due to the rapid urbanization of many cities around the world, industrial manufacturing plants have grown rapidly, thus leading to the release of large amounts of pollutants into the environment. This is the main reason for the degradation of the local air quality, resulting in an increased risk of unfavorable sanitary conditions for city dwellers. Understanding the dispersion of pollutants in local population environments, meteorological conditions and other physical characteristics is fundamental for predicting and evaluating air quality. This paper provides comprehensive details on the study of flow patterns and pollutant dispersion processes in urban areas. Several factors which include building geometry, local atmospheric effects, structural obstructions, and velocity of exhaust pollutants are examined considering field data, wind tunnel tests, operational simulation techniques, and computational fluid dynamics. Good agreements are noticeable. Simultaneous evolutions of the velocity, thermal and scalar mass fraction fields of the pollutant emitting from a three-dimensional elevated source around a rectangular obstacle placed on a turbulent boundary layer wall, and also downstream the obstacle, have been successfully carried out. The most serious pollutant levels in urban areas under various high wind velocities are identified.