Experimental studies of the dilution of vehicle exhaust pollutants by environment-protecting pervious pavement

Abstract

This study determines whether environment-protecting pervious pavement can dilute pollutants immediately after emissions from vehicle. The turbulence-driven dry-deposition process is too slow to be considered in this aspect. The pavement used is the JW pavement (according to its inventor's name), a high-load-bearing water-permeable pavement with patents in over 100 countries, which has already been used for more than 8 years in Taiwan and is well suited to replacing conventional road pavement, making the potential implementation of the study results feasible. The design of this study included two sets of experiments. Variation of the air pollutant concentrations within a fenced area over the JW pavement with one vehicle discharging emissions into was monitored and compared with results over a non-JW pavement. The ambient wind speed was low during the first experiment, and the results obtained were highly credible. It was found that the JW pavement diluted vehicle pollutant emissions near the ground surface by 40%–87% within 5 min of emission; whereas the data at 2 m height suggested that about 58%∼97% of pollutants were trapped underneath the pavement 20 min after emission. Those quantitative estimations may be off by ±10%, if errors in emissions and measurements were considered. SO₂ and CO₂ underwent the most significant reduction. Very likely, pollutants were forced to move underneath due to the special design of the pavement. During the second experiment, ambient wind speeds were high and the results obtained had less credibility, but they did not disprove the pollutant dilution capacity of the JW pavement. In order to track the fate of pollutants, parts of the pavement were removed to reveal a micro version of wetland underneath, which could possibly hold the responsibility of absorbing and decomposing pollutants to forms harmless to the environment and human health.

Implications:

The potentials of pervious pavements in improving the urban environment are advancing every day. In this paper, the authors present evidences of automobile exhaust dilution by a special-designed high-load-bearing pervious pavement. This study outlines an effective approach on evaluating such dilution effect; still more studies are needed.

Supplemental Materials: Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association for experimental studies of the dilution of vehicle exhaust pollutants by environment-protecting pervious pavement.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the National Taipei University of Technology for providing experimental studying opportunities.