Emerson Corporation Support Ural REC Project for Air Quality Monitoring

Scientists of South Ural State University, within the framework of the Ural Research and Educational Center (REC), are developing the Ecomonitor—environmental monitoring and forecasting complex to analyze the effectiveness of measures to improve the environmental situation. Emerson (U.S.), one of the world leaders in the introduction of digital control systems, associated with the scientific project.

The complex is designed to visualize modeling of short-term and long-term forecasting of the environmental situation, as well as to carry out automated analysis of data on emissions of pollutants. Ecomonitor represents an interdisciplinary project of the Institute of Natural and Precise Sciences of the South Ural State University, which ecologists, chemists, mathematicians, and programmers work on. Currently, the project team is collaborating with Emerson, one of the world leaders in the implementation of digital control systems, intelligent field equipment, and the latest industry solutions. The company's sensors are used in measuring the concentration of pollutants in an industrial plant.

The hardware-software complex allows, in conjunction with a geographical map of the area, to display in real-time simulated and predicted surface concentrations of pollutants in accordance with the characteristics of the enterprise's technological processes.

The simulation is based on the innovative model of dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, developed by the South Ural State University as part of a cooperation agreement with the Office of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources in the Chelyabinsk Region (Rosprirodnadzor). The complex of environmental monitoring and forecasting allows you to receive information from air monitoring posts, electronic control systems for emissions from fixed sources, from operators through manual input. An array of information is managed to visualize data, predict and parameterize the model.

The primary purpose of the complex is to present in real-time in a convenient form comprehensive information about the environmental situation and its development for producing decisions on reducing the environmental load and improving the environmental situation in the production system (city).

"In July 2019, we conducted an experiment in cooperation with Rosprirodnadzor in the Chelyabinsk region at the site of the enterprise Zavod Minplita. Measurements of emissions on pipes and measurements of concentrations of pollutants in the study area were carried out. The experiment confirmed the adequacy of our mathematical model. Presently we are moving on to the following stage—this is the creation of a pilot project at an industrial enterprise," said Dmitry Drozin, project manager, associate professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Programming at the Institute of Natural and Exact Sciences of SUSU.

It is relevant to note that the Ural REC is created in the framework of the federal project Development of Scientific and Scientific-Industrial Cooperation of the national project Science, which provides for the appearance in Russia over a six-year period of 15 world-class research and academic centers. The agreement was also approved by the directors of the institutes of metal physics, organic synthesis, mathematics and mechanics, and high-temperature electrochemistry at the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among industrial partners, the Sinara Group company, IRM JSC, ANO YuUPK and NPO Avtomatiki JSC were the first to enter the scientific and academic center.

Provided by South Ural State University