Particulate Matter Source Apportionment in Complex Urban and Industrial Cities: The Case of Tarragona, Spain

Abstract

In the framework of UltraPAR project (Assessing the Exposure and the Health Effects of Ambient Fine and Ultrafine Particles in areas of intensive industrial activity) the outdoor air quality of 12 schools in Tarragona (Catalonia, Spain) was monitored in winter 2016-2017. High volume air samplers equipped with quartz filters were used for sampling airborne particulate matter equal or smaller than 10, 2.5, and 1 µm (known as PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 respectively). These ambient samples together with some sources samples (harbour, industrial complexes, incinerator and road traffic) were chemically, mineralogically, and isotopically characterized and it is expected to help assessing the contribution of different emission sources. Preliminary results show that the maximum PM concentrations reached 37 µg/m 3 for PM1, 30 µg/m 3 for PM2.5 and 54 µg/m 3 for PM10 while the lead content varies in the range of 10 to 13 ng/m 3. Through XRD and SEM the marine aerosol influence is confirmed in this coastal city. The carbon isotopic signatures of the different PM sizes could be a potential tracer of its origin (mineral vs combustion sources). These findings were also compared with recent and older environmental data from other studies in similar cities or specifically in this zone to explore its consistency and possible temporal variations.

Analytical Methods for Physicochemical Characterization and Toxicity Assessment of Atmospheric Particulate Matter: A Review

“…They also allow flexibility in selecting sampling substrates, which might be influenced by available sampling options and other laboratory analyses requiring particular filter types. Qualitative and semi-quantitative XRD data have been reported from a direct analysis of PTFE (e.g., [112,137,163]) and quartz (e.g., [113,148,176]); however, a high quartz background had to be offset by subtracting blank filter measurements from diffractograms [137,176]. Moreover, these fiber filters are prone to 'masking' smaller particles stuck in the filter interior [182].…”

“…In combination with mineral databases (e.g., JCPDS) [110,112,176,177,180] ), software is used to analyze the XRD output and/or perform the quantification of the obtained mineral compositions, e.g., EVA for peaks analysis [113]; SIROQUANT 3.0 for mineral quantification [113]; and X'Pert HighScore for qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis [110,178] (MATMEC VI.0 for diffraction analysis [183] Although identifying the chemical compounds and elemental compositions of a sample is a superior advantage of XRD, its accuracy is limited by crystallinity and the relative abundance of the sample constituents, sample mass, and particle size resolution. More crystalline structures (measured by crystallinity index) produce more pronounced peaks, which makes signals from partially crystalline and amorphous materials less detectable for XRD [179,184].…”

“…In a simple qualitative XRD analysis (e.g., performed by [109,111,137,148,163,176,177]), the diffractogram peak values are checked against existing mineral databases to identify the most abundant mineral types. In a semi-quantitative analysis, the reference intensity ratio method is applied to evaluate the XRD peaks [108] in which the reference intensity values of PM given in various databases are used to estimate the relative content of each component in percent (e.g., [110,112,113,178,179]).…”