Air Pollution Sources in Libya

Abstract

This study aims to identify the quantities of hazardous gases emitted from different sources of air pollution in Libya, attempting to meet the lack of information, to provide the decision makers with the information and guidelines related to the environmental situation of the country, to fulfll the role assigned to us to mitigate the global warming and to put the polices and strategies of the development in line world policies direction. This study presents a frame work for any steps addressing air pollution abatement. The present research shows that the annual total air emissions is about 61.1 million tonnes. The largest share of emissions was for carbon dioxide CO2 (96.76%), followed by carbon monoxide CO (2.13%), then particulate matters PM (0.55%), then sulfuric dioxide SO2 (0.21%), nitrogen oxides NOX (0.18%), then methane gas CH4 (0.089%), voltaic organism component VOC (0.061%) and in the last ranking was nitrous oxide N2O with (0.028%). The annual total equivalent carbon dioxide is around 64.6 million tonnes CO2e, which represents about 9.7 ton/year/capita. Accordingly, Libya is ranking 53 from 225 in the list of countries by emissions of carbon dioxide with a contribution up to 0.22% and ranking 41 from 225 in the list of countries by emissions of carbon dioxide per capita. The present research reveals that most pollutants are emitted from the electricity industry with share of 33.9% followed by the transportation sector with 30.7% then the residential and commercial sector with 14.2% then the cement manufacturing industry with 10.9%. It was possible to mitigate these emissions by using the market available capture technologies. But unfortunately, they did not, which led to the excessive of harmful emissions to humans and the already fragile environment. Estimation of quantities of pollutants in units of mass of pollutant per unit mass of manufacturing product or fuel consumption, is necessary in order to fgure out the socio-economic effect of the environment damage and to estimate the carbon price or tax of the industrial activities, similar to the countries which preceded us in this feld. There is no work considered this topic in Libya and most of the little available works are in the measurements feld, which measured the concentrations of the pollutants for comparison purposes with international standards and it is not possible to fnd out the quantities of emissions, due to the lack of data in these reports (such as productivity, fuel consumption, fluent gas flows through the chimneys, etc...), which makes these measurements in their present fgures useless economically. This presents the novelty of this work. The present paper paved the way for more detailed survey on the air pollution sources and to draw the strategies for mitigation in Libya.