Organic Markers for the Detection of Ship Plumes in Single-particle Mass Spectrometry
JOHANNES PASSIG, Lukas Anders, Julian Schade, Ellen-Iva Rosewig, Paul Haubenwallner, Robert Irsig, Sven Ehlert, Thorsten Streibel, Andreas Walte, Thomas Adam, Ralf Zimmermann,
Helmholtz Zentrum München and University of Rostock Abstract Number: 243
Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
AbstractShipping is a main source of air pollution, substantially affecting climate and public health. Up to 400,000 annual deaths were attributed to ship emissions (Sofiev et al., 2018). Especially in populated coastal regions, the contribution of ships is difficult to quantify. Ship plume measurements require either clean air conditions or use transition metals as source markers (Passig et al., 2021). While the sensitivity of single-particle mass spectrometry (SPMS) to metals has been improved (Passig et al., 2020), metals as ship emission markers loose importance because of distillate fuels and exhaust cleaning devices to meet new regulations, emphasizing the need for novel marker approaches. Recently, chemical coverage of SPMS was extended to traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (Schade et al. 2019). Since they are by-products of any combustion, they might also work as markers for distillate fuels.
Here we present the first SPMS experiments at a ship engine. With the new PAH-sensitive technology, we measured PAH mass spectra for different fuels. Fuel-specific signatures were observed independently of the engine loads, i.e. rows of alkylated phenanthrenes that dominate the PAH mass spectra.
The applicability of the new marker concept was tested by ambient air measurements under real-world conditions. We found the aforementioned PAH patterns in coastal regions and could attribute them to ship traffic. We also detected a ship plume by the PAH emissions; from a distance of about 15 km.
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