Abstract View
Characterization and Variability of Urban Cooking Emissions Sources
SUNHYE KIM, Jo Machesky, Drew Gentner, Albert A. Presto, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract Number: 48
Working Group: Urban Aerosols
Abstract
Cooking Organic Aerosol (COA) compounds form a significant proportion fraction of ambient PM2.5 urban areas. COA is typically characterized by factor analysis of aerosol mass spectrometer data; there has been less focus on emissions from specific cooking sources. This study focuses on characterizing the variability of COA composition in urban areas to account for possible discrepancies between models and measured data.
This study measured emissions from 13 urban cooking sources in Pittsburgh and Baltimore using a mobile laboratory. We measured particle size and composition with the FMPS (fast mobility particle sizer), AMS, and aethalometer, as well as co-emitted gases (CO and CO2). Emissions from most of the sampled restaurants were similar to both the COA mass spectra found in existing literature and to each other (R2= 0.5-0.98). These high-resolution mass spectra had a high abundance of m/z 41 (C3H5+) and 55 (C3H3O+ and C4H7+). We are currently working to compare size distributions of COA emissions across the restaurants.
One exception was the emissions from a commercial bakery, which showed distinctive CHN family peaks at m/z 58 (C3H8N+), 86 (C5H12N+), and 100 (C6H14N+) that dominated the overall mass spectrum. These peaks were also present at smaller abundances at some of the restaurants where bread may have been baked on site.
Chemical transport models generally assume that all cooking sources emit particles of common composition and size. Therefore, the results of this study will directly inform any biases or errors inherent in this assumption. Understanding variability in cooking sources is especially important as models push to finer (~1 km) spatial resolution.