Principal component analysis of summertime ground site measurements in the Athabasca oil sands: Sources of IVOCs

Abstract

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Quantification of methane sources in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region of Alberta by aircraft mass balance

“…However, significant CH 4 emissions are not expected from the truck exhaust, as emissions factors of CH 4 from off-road gasoline and diesel combustion indicate that the CH 4 / CO 2 emission ratio would be 1 to 2 orders of magnitude lower (Environment Canada, 2015) than the CH 4 / CO 2 observed in this plume (0.58 ppm CH 4 / 16.1 ppm CO 2 ). The disturbance of the oil sands at the mine faces by the trucks is a well-known source of CH 4 with minor emissions of CO 2 and other VOCs (Strausz and Elizabeth, 2003) as well as intermediate volatility organic compounds (Tokarek et al, 2018). Thus, Plume A is interpreted to be a combination of heavy truck exhaust, indicated by the presence of rBC and NO y , that spatially overlaps the mine face source of CH 4 .…”

Supplementary material to "A Large Contribution of Anthropogenic Organo-Nitrates to Secondary Organic Aerosol in the Alberta Oil Sands"

“…A soot-particle aerosol mass spectrometer (SP-AMS) was deployed to measure chemical compositions and size distributions of aerosol particles (see later sections for detail). Details of other co-located instruments have been reported in Tokarek et al (2018). The AMS13 site provides a comprehensive suite of meteorological and gas-phase measurements of which wind direction, wind speed, temperature, ozone (O3), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen dioxides (NOx) were used in the data analysis.…”

“…Three types of OA, referred to as hydrocarbon-like OA (HOA), less-oxidized oxygenated OA (LO-OOA) and more-oxidized OOA (MO-OOA) were identified based on positive matrix factorization (PMF) of organic fragments HOA accounted for ~10% of total OA and was strongly correlated to two combustion tracers, rBC and NOx (r 2 = 0.70 and 0.73, Figure 1c), primarily emitted from combustion sources such as the mining fleets during the daytime (Tokarek et al, 2018). The LO-OOA and MO-OOA factors were secondary in nature and accounted for 39 and 51% of total OA, respectively.…”