Characterizing the level, photochemical reactivity, emission, and source contribution of the volatile organic compounds based on PTR-TOF-MS during winter haze period in Beijing, China

Sheng, Jian; Zhao, Delong; Ding, Deping; Li, Xia; Huang, Mengyu; Gao, Yang; Quan, Jiannong; Zhang, Qiang

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2018.05.005

Cited by 79 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…where PA and VMR are the primary anthropogenic component and the total volume mixing ratio of a given VOC (Brito et al, 2015;Sheng et al, 2018). As discussed above, the ERs derived from nighttime data are still applicable during the whole day.…”

Section: Anthropogenic and Biogenic/secondary Contribution To Ovocsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics of wintertime VOCs in suburban and urban Beijing: concentrations, emission ratios, and festival effects

Li¹,

Li²,

Tong³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Measurements of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were performed at a suburban site and an urban site in Beijing during the winter of 2014&#8211;2015. The VOC concentrations and emission ratios (ERs) to CO were compared at these two sites. It is found that though the VOC concentrations at the urban site are 2.67&#8201;&#177;&#8201;1.15 times of those at the suburban site, the ERs are similar (within a factor of 1.5). It is indicated that: (1) the VOCs at suburban areas are mainly from the transportation from the urban areas; (2) the ERs measured at the urban areas are also valid for the surrounding suburban areas. By comparing the diurnal variations and the contribution of anthropogenic emissions at both sites, we find that the photochemical processes are very active at the urban site, and these processes play an important role in the daytime oxygenated VOCs (OVOCs) formation. The methanol at the urban site and the formic acid at the suburban site probably have additional sources, which are attributed to be solvent use and soil/agriculture, respectively. The festival effects from Chinese New Year (CNY) were investigated. The VOC concentrations decreased ~&#8201;60&#8201;% during CNY holidays, probably due to the population migration during festival holidays. In addition, fireworks are found to be an important source of acetonitrile, aromatics, and some OVOCs during CNY festival, and should be controlled more strictly. This study provides key characteristics of wintertime VOCs in suburban and urban Beijing, and has implications for better understanding the atmospheric chemistry of VOCs in and around this megacity.</p>

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Section: Anthropogenic and Biogenic/secondary Contribution To Ovocsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characteristics of wintertime VOCs in suburban and urban Beijing: concentrations, emission ratios, and festival effects

Li¹,

Li²,

Tong³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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“…The wind direction also seemed to be cyclical on each day in response to local mountain valley circulation around Beijing (Hu et al, 2005). According to other studies, stronger northerly winds occurring in the winter are the main mechanism through which pollution is removed, leading to good air quality (Sheng et al, 2018).…”

Section: Surface Observations Of Haze and Meteorological Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The potential temperature (θ ) determined by radiosonde technology is calculated from the following formula: (Stull, 1988); T is the measured temperature. As noted in many previous stud-ies, the most widely used approach for the determination of the ABL height and structure for the daytime and nighttime involves identifying local maxima in potential temperature vertical gradient profiles as measured by radiosonde devices (Seibert et al, 2000;Summa et al, 2013;Sorbjan, 1989), but this method is only appropriate to apply to the convective ABL (Hennemuth and Lammert, 2006). Since the pollution period we examine involves stagnant winter weather conditions and as our radiosonde data only apply to dawn and dusk periods (08:00 and 20:00 LT), a stable boundary layer often appears (see Fig.…”

Section: Boundary Layer Structure Observed By Radiosonde Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Addressing this question requires conducting a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of weather conditions, pollutant emissions, regional transport processes, physicochemical transformation mechanisms and interactions between haze and boundary layer structures (Huang et al, 2014;Sun et al, 2014;Ding et al, 2016). Some previous studies have been conducted on haze events in the Beijing area (Li et al, 2017;Sheng et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2018), on the physical and chemical mechanism analyses especially, based on comprehensive observation data from tall towers (Sun et al, 2006;Guo et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Multiple technical observations of the atmospheric boundary layer structure of a red-alert haze episode in Beijing

Shi

Fan

et al. 2019

Atmos. Meas. Tech.

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Abstract. The study and control of air pollution involves measuring the structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) to understand the mechanisms of the interactions occurring between the atmospheric boundary layer and air pollution. Beijing, the capital of China, experienced heavy haze pollution in December 2016, and the city issued its first red-alert air pollution warning of the year (the highest PM2.5 concentrations were later found to exceed 450 µg m−3). In this paper, the vertical profiles of wind, temperature, humidity and the extinction coefficient (reflecting aerosol concentrations), as well as ABL heights and turbulence quantities under heavy haze pollution conditions, are analyzed, with data collected from lidar, wind profile radar (WPR), radiosondes, a 325 m meteorological tower (equipped with a 7-layer ultrasonic anemometer and 15-layer low-frequency wind, temperature, and humidity sensors) and ground observations. The ABL heights obtained by three different methods based on lidar extinction coefficient data (Hc) are compared with the heights calculated from radiosonde temperature data (Hθ), and their correlation coefficient can reach 72 %. Our results show that Hθ measured on heavy haze pollution days was generally lower than that measured on clean days without pollution, but Hc increased from clean to heavy pollution days. The time changes in friction velocity (u*) and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) were clearly inversely correlated with PM2.5 concentration. Momentum and heat fluxes varied very little with altitude. The nocturnal sensible heat fluxes close to the Earth surface always stay positive. In the daytime of the haze pollution period, sensible heat fluxes were greatly reduced within 300 m of the ground. These findings will deepen our understanding of the boundary layer structure under heavy pollution conditions and improve the boundary layer parameterization in numerical models.

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“…The most predominant atmospheric carbonyl compounds besides formaldehyde are acetaldehyde and acetone. They have been reported to vary from a few hundred ppt in remote areas (Warneke and de Gouw, 2001; Lewis et al, 2005;White et al, 2008;Colomb et al, 2009;Read et al, 2012;Sjostedt et al, 2012;Tanimoto et al, 2014;Hornbrook et al, 2016) to several ppb in urban and polluted areas (Dolgorouky et al, 2012;Guo et al, 2013;Stoeckenius and McNally, 2014;Sahu et al, 2017;Sheng et al, 2018). Generally, secondary photochemical formation from various precursors is the main source in those regions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measurements of carbonyl compounds around the Arabian Peninsula indicate large missing sources of acetaldehyde

Wang

Edtbauer

Stönner

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Abstract. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were measured around the Arabian Peninsula using a research vessel during the AQABA campaign (Air Quality and Climate Change in the Arabian Basin) from June to August 2017. In this study we examine carbonyl compounds (CxHyO), measured by a proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-ToF-MS), and present both a regional concentration distribution and a budget assessment for these key atmospheric species. Among the aliphatic carbonyls, acetone had the highest mixing ratios in most of the regions traversed, varying from 0.43 ppb over the Arabian Sea to 4.5 ppb over the Arabian Gulf, followed by formaldehyde (measured by Hantzsch monitor, 0.82 ppb over the Arabian Sea and 3.8 ppb over the Arabian Gulf) and acetaldehyde (0.16 ppb over the Arabian Sea and 1.7 ppb over the Arabian Gulf). Unsaturated carbonyls (C4–C9) varied from 10 to 700 ppt during the campaign, and followed similar regional mixing ratio dependence as aliphatic carbonyls, which were identified as oxidation products of cycloalkanes over polluted areas. An empirical method based on hydrocarbon ratios was applied to investigate the photochemical source strength of the aliphatic carbonyls. While the distribution and relative concentration enhancements of the C3–C8 aliphatic carbonyls could be explained by this method, that of acetaldehyde could not. A smaller but still significant discrepancy was found when comparing measurements to global chemistry-transport model (EMAC) results, with the model underestimating the measured acetaldehyde mixing ratio up to an order of magnitude. Implementing a photolytically driven marine source of acetaldehyde significantly improved the agreement between measurements and model, particularly over the remote regions (e.g. Arabian Sea). However, the newly introduced acetaldehyde source was still insufficient to describe the observations over the most polluted regions (Arabian Gulf and Suez), where model underestimation of primary emissions and biomass burning events are possible reasons.

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Characterizing the level, photochemical reactivity, emission, and source contribution of the volatile organic compounds based on PTR-TOF-MS during winter haze period in Beijing, China

Cited by 79 publications

References 54 publications

Characteristics of wintertime VOCs in suburban and urban Beijing: concentrations, emission ratios, and festival effects

Characteristics of wintertime VOCs in suburban and urban Beijing: concentrations, emission ratios, and festival effects

Multiple technical observations of the atmospheric boundary layer structure of a red-alert haze episode in Beijing

Measurements of carbonyl compounds around the Arabian Peninsula indicate large missing sources of acetaldehyde

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