AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Use of Stack Samples to Enhance Source Apportionment of Particulate Matter Mass Collected in Ambient Air Samples
SURESH RAJA, Punith Nallathamby, ENERCON Services, Inc.
Abstract Number: 530 Working Group: Source Apportionment
Abstract The national air quality standards for particulate matter (PM) have created the need to identify the sources of PM, so that effective control strategies can be designed and implemented. In order to conduct source apportionment, samples need to be collected and analyzed for properties that are characteristic of the pollutant sources. Several receptor models have been developed to identify sources to the measured airborne PM concentration. In this work, (1) we have developed a comprehensive source library for a specific industry, using the PM collected from a variety of stack samples, and (2) collected multiple ambient PM2.5 samples at locations close to the sources of interest. The source profile library and the ambient PM2.5 samples were analyzed for metals. Filter extracts were also analyzed for anions and cations using a DIONEX Model DX 500 ion chromatograph. The quartz filters were analyzed for EC and OC using the IMPROVE protocol. The ambient samples were analyzed for the sources using Chemical Balance Model (CMB) and the measured source profile library, since CMB has the capability of analyzing individual samples if local source profiles or fingerprints are known. In addition to this, Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) model was used to identify the sources in the PM collected in ambient samples. The sources profiles obtained using the PMF model was then used as the source profile input in the CMB model. The vital points of this study includes (1) the availability of sources profiles, and, (2) comparison of the results from PMF and CMB modeling. The CMB modeling results from the two source profiles (i.e., measured source profiles and source profiles derived from PMF) were then compared and analyzed. This presentation will focus on this analysis and summarize the results from this study.