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Industrial sources of primary and secondary organic aerosols in two urban environments in Spain

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Abstract

In urban areas, primary and secondary organic aerosols are typically considered to originate from vehicular traffic emissions. However, industrial emissions within or in the vicinity of urban areas may also be significant contributors to carbonaceous aerosol concentrations. This hypothesis was tested and validated in two urban areas in Spain. The observed unusual dominance of organic carbon (OC) over elemental carbon (EC), the analysis of the variability of OC, EC and OC/EC and their correlation with transport patterns suggested the presence of OC sources associated with industrial activities. A methodology based on chemical speciation of particulate matter (PM) followed by the application of receptor modelling techniques allowed for the identification of the specific industrial sources of OC, which were linked to primary OC emissions from a grain drying plant (cereal) and to secondary OC formation from paper production activities (paper mills), as well as from urban sources and biogenic emissions. This work presents an integrated approach to identifying and characterizing of industrial sources of carbonaceous aerosols in urban areas, aiming to improve the scarce body of literature currently available on this topic.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment (UCA2009020083), by national projects IMPACT (CGL2011-26574) and VAMOS (CLG2010-19464-CLI) and CUD de Zaragoza through the project “Niveles de Ozono troposférico en el Centro Nacional de Adiestramiento de San Gregorio y su entorno”. Support is acknowledged to Generalitat de Catalunya 2009 SGR8. The authors wish to acknowledge the collaboration from the Government of Aragón and the Monzón City Council in the sampling. The software OpenAir was used for data analysis and plotting in this publication (http://www.openair-project.org/). Finally, the authors would like to thank NOAA for the provision of GDAS meteorological data for PBLH calculations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centro Universitario de la Defensa (CUD) de Zaragoza, Academia General Militar, Ctra. de Huesca s/n, 50090, Zaragoza, Spain

    M. Escudero

  2. Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDÆA-CSIC), Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    M. Viana, X. Querol & A. Alastuey

  3. Área de Contaminación Atmosférica, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ctra. Majadahonda-Pozuelo, km 2, 28220, Majadahonda, Spain

    P. Díez Hernández & S. García Dos Santos

  4. Laser Laboratory and Environment, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    J. Anzano

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  1. M. Escudero
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  3. X. Querol
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Responsible editor: Constantini Samara

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Table S1

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Table S2

(DOC 192 kb)

Figure S1

Average composition of PM10, PM2.5 and PM2.5-10 in TRAF and UB during 2011. (DOC 271 kb)

Figure S2

Source profiles of the emission factors containing carbonaceous aerosols as tracers identified for PM10 and PM2.5 in TRAF after analysis with PMF. (DOC 175 kb)

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Escudero, M., Viana, M., Querol, X. et al. Industrial sources of primary and secondary organic aerosols in two urban environments in Spain. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 10413–10424 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-4228-x

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