The impact of flue gas cleaning technologies in coal-fired power plants on the CCN distribution and cloud properties in Germany.

Gas-cleaning technologies used in modern coal-fired power plants cause an unintended nucleation of H₂SO₄ aerosol droplets during the cleaning process. As a result, high concentrations of ultra-fine aerosol droplets are emitted into the atmosphere. In this study, the impact of these emissions on the atmospheric aerosol distribution, on the cloud condensation nuclei number concentration, and consequently on cloud properties is investigated. Therefore, a sophisticated modeling framework is used combining regional simulations of the atmospheric aerosol distribution and its impact on cloud properties with detailed process simulations of the nucleation during the cleaning process inside the power plant. Furthermore, the simulated aerosol size distributions downwind of the coal-fired power plants are compared with airborne aerosol measurements performed inside the plumes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]