Modelling of urban ambient N, N-dimethylformamide concentrations in a small-scale synthetic leather industrial zone

A method to model small-scale ambient concentrations of N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) in a synthetic leather industrial zone was developed. Longwan, a district of Wenzhou City in Southeast China, was selected as the study area. DMF emissions at the synthetic leather industrial zone were inventoried, during 2007, and an AMS/EPA regulatory model (AERMOD) was used to simulate DMF concentrations using 10 000 100 mx100 m grids for the 2006 period. In 2007, actual DMF concentrations were recorded at seven DMF monitoring stations, and were compared with simulated results for the same timeframe. Simulated DMF concentrations were predicted to be in the range of 0.012-2.31 mg/m(3), which is similar to the range of the monitored dataset results. A large majority (93%) of relative errors (REs) between simulated and monitored concentrations ranged from 0.48% to 189.4%. While DMF emissions within factories did not exceed the regulated emission limit, simulations indicated that, in 2006, 20% of the daily average ambient DMF concentrations exceeded this limit. This Modelling method could be applied in evaluating regional atmospheric environmental capacities and human exposure to DMF.