PNNL

Abstract

Carbonaceous aerosols are major components in air pollution as a result of energy consumption, thus measurement of them is important to waste management. Increasing interest has been drawn to the identification, measurement, analysis, and modeling of carbon aerosols in the past decade. This book chapter will provide a review of current state-of-art techniques to determine carbonaceous aerosols in relation to air pollution and waste management. The chapter will be composed of four parts. The introduction will discuss why carbon aerosols including elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), and total carbon (TC=EC+OC) are important to energy consumption, air pollution, waste management, and global climate change. Key definitions will be introduced. Relevant terminologies will be provided. The second part will be a review of the current state-of the art measurement techniques that are used to determine carbon aerosols. Both on-line and off-line methods will be described. Comparisons of different techniques that provide the same physical quantity will be provided based on recent literature findings. Differences among the physical parameters determined by various techniques will be discussed. The third part will focus on data analysis and products obtained from carbon aerosol measurements. In addition to EC, OC, and TC, primary organic carbon (POC) and secondary organic carbon (SOC) are of interest to researchers to understand the source and sink of carbonaceous aerosols. Techniques used to determine POC and SOC, such as the EC tracer method and positive matrix factorization, will be described and their differences discussed. Examples will be provided showing field data comparison between the Sunset organic carbon and elemental carbon field analyzer and the Aerodyne aerosol mass spectrometer, both of which are widely used for on-line aerosol measurements. The last part will report new trends and summarize future research needs in carbon aerosol measurement. Emerging problems will be identified and research priorities will be recommended.