Evaluación de la concentración de material radiactivo disperso en la atmósfera a través de la ecuación de difusión : Solución de la ecuación de advección para la liberación instantánea de contaminantes.

Abstract

The study of toxic gas dispersion is a crucial topic due to its potentially dangerous impacts on human health and the environment. To understand how these gases disperse in the environment, various mathematical models have been developed, including the advection-diffusion equation. Simulation of these models is essential to predict air pollutant levels and make informed decisions. This study proposes the implementation of some codes in MATLAB to estimate the concentration of radioactive materials released in the form of a puff, using analytical and numerical solutions of the advection-diffusion equation in three and one dimension, respectively. To do this, three different analytical equations were used that modeled different release scenarios, where system parameters such as material release rate, wind speed, diffusion coefficient, chimney height, among others, were described. While the finite difference method and the Euler method were used to solve the advection-diffusion equation numerically. In addition, a graphical interface was developed in App Designer to facilitate manipulation by users and improve the interpretation of the results. The latter revealed that the wind speed and the diffusion coefficient influence the dispersion of the contaminant, an increase in these values results in a more accelerated dispersion of the contaminant throughout the domain, which in turn causes a more rapid reduction of the concentration on specific points.