Annual Concentration Report and Emission Sources Analysis of the Air Pollutants Measured by the Air Quality Monitoring Station

Abstract

was routinely monitor the annual concentrations and analysis the emission sources of the air pollutants in the area since 2007. The level of concentration CO, SO 2 , NO x and O 3 were measured. PM 10 concentration was measured by mean of TOEM method. The PM 10 and TSP (manifold) filters were collected for the measurement of heavy metals adsorbed in the particulate by ICP-AES techniques. Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) and Energy Dispersive Spectrometric (EDS) techniques were used to identify the morphologies and elemental compositions of particulate matters from the PM 10 and TSP filters. Approach: The annual concentrations of all pollutants were almost real-time reported from July 2007-2008. The O 3 concentrations are higher than the standard level (100 ppb) in July 2007 and April 2008 with the value of 109 and 114 ppb, respectively. Average PM 10 concentrations are higher than the standard level (120 µg.m −3 ) in November 2007, January 2008 and March 2008 with the value of129, 123 and 125 µg.m −3 , respectively. Strong correlations between NO 2 with O 3 and between NO 2 with PM 10 were found. Results: These results showed that NO 2 was the precursor of the photochemical reaction and generate O 3 . NO 2 concentrations are found to be corresponding with both O 3 and PM 10 . The directions of O 3 emission sources were the southwest, south and southeast due to wind direction, whereas the PM 10 are originated from the northwest. The microscopic structures of TSP provided various shapes and dimensions from 0.1 to greater than 100 µm, while the microstructures of PM 10 presented the needle-like and spherical shape. SEM-EDS analysis was able to detect some element (C, O, F, Na, Al, Si and K), while the ICP-AES showed that there were other heavy metals present in the filter sample (Ni, Cu, Zn, Pb and Se). Conclusion: Among the amounts of selected heavy metals, Zn is the most probable among all metals with the value of 1.3891±1.6198 µg .g −1 .m −3 in TSP. Amounts of heavy metals inPM 10 , Cu is dominated with 0.5374±0.8084 µg .g −1 .m −3 , the others were almost in the same levels and much lower than in TSP. Correlation coefficient between each metal can be estimate the emission source of their particulate matter together with the wind speed and wind direction.