Green cabins to monitor air and noise

Being able to receive data on emissions from port activity in real time will allow the port to continuously improve the state of the environment by adjusting its activities.

“These new cabins complement the PAV’s entire environmental monitoring network for the control of environmentally friendly installations,” said a PAV spokesperson.

“In this sense, the objective of the PAV is to continue reinforcing its commitment to sustainability through innovative solutions to analyse air quality, and to offer information to the port community and the Port’s neighbours in an active and regular manner.”

Green investment

These new environmental control booths, in which the PAV has invested almost €300,000, are installed on the esplanade of the old Turia riverbed and on the Transversales de Poniente quay.

These are sites selected by the Centre for Environmental Studies for the Mediterranean (CEAM), a foundation of the Generalitat Valenciana for research, technological innovation and improvement of the environment.

The cabins are equipped with technology for monitoring atmospheric pollutants: they have five gas analysers that analyse the concentration of sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NO2/NO/NOx), ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO) and PM10 and PM2.5 particles.

They are also equipped with a weather station to measure wind speed and direction, rainfall, solar radiation, temperature, relative humidity and barometric pressure. They are also equipped with sound level meters to measure the noise levels in the harbour.

These new environmental control booths are part of an extensive network that also has three weather stations, a dozen environmental sensors, predictive and static noise maps, a network of sound level meters, daily water cleaning and periodic studies on water quality, among others.

Since the cabins of the Port of València (AP MT Ponent) have been connected to the Monitoring Network of the Generalitat Valenciana, 46 days (out of 56) have shown “excellent” quality and ten “good” results.

The new cabins are part of the GREEN C PORTS project, which is coordinated by the Valenciaport Foundation and co-financed by the European Union.