Impact Assessment of Ambient Air Quality by Cement Industry: A Case Study in Jordan

Cement industry is flourishing in the Middle East and North African countries due to the rapid population growth, the change in living style, and the availability of raw material in the region. Unless restricted regulations are enforced by local authorities to ensure compliance with national and international standards upon this industry, the increase of cement factories and their associated quarries in the region may deteriorate air quality and thus threaten the fragile ecosystems in the region. This paper presents predictions of air pollution (dust, SO2, NOx and CO) emitted from a modern cement plant that will be constructed in the Jordan Badia South-East of Amman. AERMOD is used to carry out the modeling part of this assessment. Our findings indicate that after the implementation of the proposed project, concentrations of air pollutant are found to be well below the permissible Jordanian Standards for ambient air quality. Therefore, the proposed activity is not likely to have any significant adverse impact on the air environment in the vicinity of the proposed project. However, The TSP concentration is expected to be high at the limestone quarry, which provides the factory with its main raw material, because it generates lots of dust as a result of rocks mining and crushing.