AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Characterization of Carbonaceous Particle Emissions by Mobile Sources in Sao Paulo (Brazil)
Maria de Fatima Andrade, Adalgiza Fornaro, Beatriz Oyama, Rita Ynoue, PIERRE HERCKES, Arizona State University
Abstract Number: 766 Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract Emissions from mobile sources (cars, trucks) account for a substantial fraction of ambient particulate matter and are of interest from an air quality and climate perspective. Emissions within megacities might have substantial impacts beyond the city, on a regional scale. While many studies addressed particulate matter emissions from vehicles in the northern hemisphere, less is known in the southern hemisphere.
In this work, size resolved particulate matter samples were collected during two tunnel studies in the City of Sao Paulo (Brazil) to investigate the emission of carbonaceous aerosol by mobile sources. A first tunnel, within the center of the city was characterized by mainly light-duty vehicle traffic, some of which used alcohol as fuel. In this tunnel organic carbon accounted for the largest fraction of particulate mass, while elemental carbon (soot), was substantial but not a dominant fraction of the particulate matter and hence the emissions. A second tunnel, strongly impacted by heavy duty trucks, showed substantial concentrations of particulate matter with a dominant fraction being elemental carbon. The results of the tunnel studies will be discussed in terms of variability by vehicle types, particulate matter size and in terms of analytical measurements to assess soot (Elemental carbon vs black carbon).