Editing pollution properties

[Tubthumper 499]

Can someone explain the levels of air pollution for ireader?  I am trying to convert a coal power plant into a "clean coal" (i.e. it still produces some air pollution - but through the use of scrubbers and type of coal used it isn't horrendous).  I see in ireader the levels can be between something like -100k to 100k...

Basically I want the thing to produce pollution akin to manufacturing industry 

[Cyclone Boom 16,938]

1 hour ago, Tubthumper said:

Can someone explain the levels of air pollution for ireader?

There are two relevant properties which set pollution levels:

Pollution at center
0x27812851

The 4 values in this property (from left to right) represent:

Air pollution,  Water pollution,  Garbage pollution,  Radiation pollution

They are to be entered as hex values, and so a conversion site like this one might come in handy.

 

Pollution radii
0x68EE9764

 

This property controls the radius of each pollution type. Again they represent the same as the types, and so the 7 is for air pollution here. Note that this property is different being Float32 which means each value must be a whole number. This makes sense too because radii in the game cannot have decimal places.

(The only reason decimals appear in Reader is due to the display format. They're not actually read this way by the game.)

Alternatively to Reader (as recommended for all modding), another tool which can edit pollution properties (among other basic things), is the LEProp tool.

[CorinaMarie 29,618]

2 hours ago, Tubthumper said:

I am trying to convert a coal power plant into a "clean coal" (i.e. it still produces some air pollution - but through the use of scrubbers and type of coal used it isn't horrendous).

From this page, the initial goal was to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO₂) emissions by 68% by 2014. If you go for that amount for the Maxis coal power plant, you would change the 0x000000C8 (200 decimal) of the first value in the Pollution at center panel (which @Cyclone Boom shows above) to 0x00000040 (64 decimal). That page then goes on to say it's possible to reduce emissions up to 98%.

I believe it'll then be a matter of deciding how advanced you want to simulate your scrubbers. I'd prolly go with 75% reduction and feel it's a reasonably believable amount so that would be 0x00000032 (50 decimal).

Ofc, if you want the 98% reduction that'd give you a mere 0x00000004 (4 decimal) and it would be even less than the Maxis nuclear and hydrogen plants which are set at 0x0000000A (10 decimal) and it'd also be less than the 0x00000005 of the solar plant.

I'd leave the Pollution radii at the Maxis value since changing the amount of pollution would not affect the air dispersion pattern.