Air Pollution from the Maritime Transport in the Romanian Black Sea Coast

Abstract

The economic activities carried out in Romania's Black Sea jurisdiction are numerous and diverse. The water transport activity is highlighted by the important quantities of goods transiting the Romanian ports in the trade between Africa, Asia and Europe. In recent years, is added the exploitation of marine resources on the continental shelf. These activities will permanently involve water transport as an integral part of the logistics chain associated with offshore activities (platform supply, operation and maintenance work etc.). Therefore, the latest reports from the International Maritime Organization show that these activities are an important source of air pollution, ship's pollutant emissions affecting human health and the environment. Literature mention that more than 70% of ship emissions, especially greenhouse gases, occur in the coastal area in a "band" of up to 20 nautical miles from the coast. In this context, the paper proposes the implementation of an innovative solution for the monitoring of ship gas emissions, which will allow the management of this problem in the Western Black Sea area. The research conducted has developed a mathematical model and a software solution. The paper has a complex approach in which a database has been created, with the vessels that have passed through the area under review, a database that can be permanently updated. Centralized information in the database is the input for the software solution, which determines the fuel consumption and emissions of pollutants from the vessels in the area for various analysis periods. All these measures allow the outline of the "footprint" for each polluting vessel. The results obtained can be used both for environmental impact assessment and for setting environmental standards by national regulators, depending on a set of predefined parameters that characterize the ship: tonnage, propulsion power and engine type.