Date of Award

5-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Environmental Science

First Advisor

Dr. Alaa ElDin Salem

Second Advisor

Prof. Huba Kalasz

Third Advisor

Dr. Ibrahim Abdou

Abstract

Air pollution monitoring is highly valuable due to effects on economics and public health. Hence, concerned authorities in different countries as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) specified the permitted standard concentration of the main pollutants. Large number of countries also have built their air quality monitoring stations, and distributed them in several sites to monitor air pollutants over the whole year. Some developed countries established an awareness environmental program to educate the public and inform them of daily pollution level to take necessary precautions.

In this study, air pollution was monitored in AI-Ain City over twelve months, through monitoring the following gases: nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and ammonia. Four sites were selected representing AI-Ain City industrial, traffic, commercial and residential zones. In addition, a background site in a remote area outside the city was selected.

Passive sampling techniques was used to collect the above mentioned air pollutants due to its low cost, low technical demand as well as expediency for monitoring many polluted locations. Ion chromatography, ammonia ion selective electrode devices as well as spectrophotometry, were used for analysis.

A new sensitive spectrophotometric method was developed to measure nitrogen dioxide at concentration lower than 1 ppm. A lower concentration of nitrogen dioxide was measured through a reaction between the resulted nitrite and ABTS.

This thesis is divided into five chapters as follows:

  1. Chapter 1 (Introduction): includes a description of AI-Ain city and the area selected for our study. A description for the four selected air pollutants and the passive sampling techniques is also included.
  2. Chapter 2 (Literature Review): includes an overview of the previous studies performed to determine the concentration of the selected air pollutants and the passive sampling techniques. Aims of this study were summarized at the end of this chapter.
  3. Chapter 3 (Experimental): includes a description of the preparation of the chemical solutions; preparing, deploying, and extracting the passive samplers; and a description for the used instruments.
  4. Chapter 4 (Results and Discussions): includes a presentation of the results and their analysis.
  5. Chapter 5 (Determination of the Concentration of Nitrogen Dioxide using ABTS): includes a detailed description of the developed method in measuring a lower concentration of nitrogen dioxide.
  6. Conclusion and Recommendations: includes summary for the most important outputs obtained from this investigation. Suggestions and recommendations are also included.

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