Biomass burning tracers in rural and urban ultrafine particles in Xi'an,China

To investigate the impact of biomass burning emissions on ultrafine particles (PM0.133: particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 0.133 μm), biomass burning tracers (including levoglucosan, mannonsan and K+) were measured at a rural and an urban sites in Xi'an during winter heating period. The average levoglucosan concentrations of rural and urban PM0.133 were 0.93 ± 0.32 μg m−3 and 0.29 ± 0.14 μg m−3, respectively. Comparable PM0.133 mannosan concentrations were observed in rural samples (0.16 ± 0.26 μg m−3) and urban samples (0.17 ± 0.10 μg m−3). Higher correlation between levoglucosan and K+ was obtained for urban samples (R = 0.86) than that for rural samples (R = 0.72). The levoglucosan to K+ ratio was found to be higher for rural samples (0.77 ± 0.39) compared to that for urban samples (0.32 ± 0.14). Levoglucosan to mannosan ratios averaged 7.86 and 2.83 for rural and urban samples, respectively. It can be concluded that the major source of rural biomass burning was the combustion of crop residuals and softwood. The contributions of biomass burning to OC ranged from 19% to 32%, with an average of 24% for rural samples. The results provide a better understanding on the rural and urban magnitude of levoglucosan and contributions of biomass burning in Xi'an

Positive sampling artifacts of organic carbon fractions for fine particles and nanoparticles in a tunnel environment

The positive artifacts in particulate organic carbon fractions for fine particles (PM2.5) and nanoparticles (PM0.1) were characterized in a tunnel environment by using the QBQ (a quartz filter behind a quartz filter) method. The OC concentrations of the backup quartz filters ranged from 3.56 to 11.38 mu g m(-3) with the average of 6.70 mu g m(-3) for PM2.5, and from 2.62 to 7.27 mu g m(-3) With the average of 4.64 mu g m(-3) for PM0.1. The most abundant species on the backup quartz filters was OC1 for both PM2.5 and PM0.1, accounting for 56.9% and 41.1% of the measured organic carbon, respectively. Most of EC fractions (EC1-EC3) on the backup filters for PM2.5 and PM0.1 were below the minimum detection limit. Therefore, only OC contributed to positive artifacts distinctly with the average percentage of 21.7% and 48.0% for PM2.5 and PM0.1, respectively. The artifacts for four organic carbon fractions ranged from 36.1% (OC1) to 4.4% (OC4) for PM2.5 and from 68.0% (OC1) to 31.9% (OC4) for PM0.1]. The uncorrected OC/EC ratios on the front quartz filters were higher by as much as 30% and 107% for PM2.5 and PM0.1 than those corrected for positive organic artifacts, respectively. That is, much higher percentage of positive artifacts was found for PM0.1 DC fractions on the front filters. The comparison of the present and previous studies shows that OC positive artifacts vary widely among various PM fractions and sampling sites attributing to many factors that are worth investigating in the future.</p

Comparison and implications of PM2.5 carbon fractionsin different environments

The concentrations of PM2.5 carbon fractions in rural, urban, tunnel and remote environments were measured using the IMPROVE thermal optical reflectance (TOR) method. The highest OC1 and EC1 concentrations were found for tunnel samples, while the highest OC2, OC3, and OC4 concentrations were observed for urban winter samples, respectively. The lowest levels of most carbon fractions were found for remote samples. The percentage contributions of carbon fractions to total carbon (TC) were characterized by one peak (at rural and remote sites) and two peaks (at urban and tunnel sites) with different carbon fractions, respectively. The abundance of char in tunnel and urban environments was observed, which might partly be due to traffic-related tire-wear. Various percentages of optically scattering OC and absorbing EC fractions to TC were found in the four different environments. In addition, the contribution of heating carbon fractions (char and soot) indicated various warming effects per unit mass of TC. The ratios of OC/EC and char/soot at the sites were shown to be source indicators. The investigation of carbon fractions at different sites may provide some information for improving model parameters in estimating their radiative effects.</p