On Optimization of Air Pollution and Electricity Production of Thermal Power Plants of Delhi using Goal Programming

Abstract

Air pollution is a serious problem in today’s rapidly developing world. Burning of fossil fuels has been the source of air pollution since ages. Coal is a major source of electricity production in India. About 56% of total electricity produced is from Thermal Power Plants (TPPs). In Delhi we have taken 5 TPPs producing about 2800 MW of energy catering to the desire of the nation for this study.Sulphur dioxide (SO₂), Oxides of Nitrogen (NO_x)_, Total Suspended particulate matter (TSPM) are the main pollutants emitted from TPPs. Due to burning of coal in huge amount in TPPs a large amount of pollutants is emitted in the air. But on the contrary we cannot stop this process completely as coal is efficient as well as easily available resource in this day and other non conventional sources like solar, tidal, wind power etc. are in their infancy in the country. In this paper we are trying to optimize pollutants of air emitted from TPPs and electricity production in aggregate from 5 TPPs working in Delhi using a Goal Programming (GP) model.

Keywords: Thermal Power Plant (TPP), SO₂, NO_x, TSPM, Optimization, Goal Programming (GP)