AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Comparison of Organic Compounds in PM2.5 High-Concentration Events from Seoul and Beijing
HYEWON KIM, Soyoung Jung, Jieun Park, Youngkwon Kim, Seung-Muk Yi, Kwang-Jo Moon, Kwon Ho Jeon, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Abstract Number: 837 Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract Seoul and Beijing are both megacities with high population and traffic volume. These two cities are highly polluted due to the local air pollution from primary sources such as industrial complexes as well as the inflow of air pollutants from other East Asian countries. In particular, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) from high-concentration events (HCEs) that occur in winter and spring contains various organic compounds.
Organic carbon, which comprises 20-80% of the total mass of PM2.5, consists of various organic compounds, which exhibit characteristics that are related to emission from specific sources such as mobile and coal combustion. To develop control strategies against PM2.5, contributing sources can be determined by identifying the chemical properties of these organic compounds. Although the main compositions of PM2.5 for each city were reported in several studies, only a few studies compared organic compounds from both cities. Thus, the purpose of this study is to compare the characteristics of organic compounds in HCEs from both cities.
To determine the characteristics of organic compounds, PM2.5 samples were collected for 23-hr in Seoul and Beijing by using a high-volume air sampler (TE-HVPLUS, TISCH, USA). The collected samples were extracted with an organic solvent that contained a 3:1 mixture of dichloromethane (DCM) (HPLC grade, J. T. Baker, USA) and methanol (HPLC grade, J. T. Baker, USA), and the extracts were concentrated with nitrogen gas to 1 mL by using TurboVap II (Caliper Life Sciences, USA). The final concentrates were analyzed for organic compounds such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), n-alkanes and hopanes by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (7890A/5975C, Agilent).