Air pollution control with semi-infinite programming

Environment issues are more than ever important in a modern society. Complying with stricter legal thresholds on pollution emissions raises an important economic issue. This paper presents some ideas in the use of optimization tools to help in the planning and control of stationary pollution sources. Three main semi-infinite programming approaches are described. The first consists in optimizing an objective function while the pollution level in a given region is kept bellow a given threshold. In the second approach the maximum pollution level in a given region is computed and in the third an air pollution abatement problem is considered. These formulations allow to obtain the best control parameters and the maxima pollution positions, where the sampling stations should be placed. A specific modeling language was used to code four academic problems. Numerical results Computed with a semi-infinite programming solver are shown. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.