Abstract
The Philippine Clean Air Act allows the use of air dispersion modeling to determine or predict ground level concentration of pollutants from point source emissions such as emission stacks. This study has attempted to assess the applicability of AERMOD air dispersion model in the Philippine scenario specifically in an oil refinery in Batangas, south of Manila to determine the SO2 and NOX ambient concentrations from stack emissions for 2002. AERMOD requires that specific electronic file formats are to be inputted in the AERMET and AERMAP preprocessors in order to successfully run the program, which took most of the efforts in the modeling exercise. This study provides some insights into the problems encountered in the availability and processing of various data, especially meteorological data as well as preliminary results. One of the recommendations is that for AERMOD to be usable and relevant for application in the Philippines, adequate attention should be given to upgrade the access and quality of meteorological and terrain data especially from government agencies.
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