XRF characterization and source apportionment of PM10 samples collected in a coastal city

Abstract

In the current study, a yearlong measurement campaign was conducted during the year 2012 in a medium sized coastal Greek city, Patras. PM10 samples were collected once every 3 days, and a number of those samples were analyzed by the use of a commercial X‐ray fluorescence system, Epsilon 5 by PANalytical, The Netherlands. PMF model was used for source identification. Because the uncertainty of the measurements is used as input in the model, special emphasis was given in its accurate estimation. Seven PM10 emission sources were identified using PMF 5.0 and were, namely, mineral dust (15%), road dust (4.6%), shipping emissions (3.8%), sea salt (11.9%), biomass burning (6.9%), traffic (46.2%), and sulfates (11.6%). The concentration weighted approach was used to investigate if the contributions of the sources identified in the area are affected by long range transportation events. A methodology of estimating the uncertainty of the day to day source contributions is proposed in this study. A comparison between the 24‐hr contribution for the mineral dust factor provided by the model and the calculated contributions for the same factor deduced from appropriate equations (chemical reconstruction) can be used for this purpose. The analysis showed that when the concentrations of the elements associated with the mineral dust source are close to their lowest value, the model assigns zero contribution to the mineral dust source. Following this methodology in the current study, 6 points were identified as bad fitting points, a number that represents less than 10% of the total measurements.

Elemental characterization and source identification of the near‐road PM2.5 using EDXRF in Chengdu, China

“…[29] Cu and Zn could be the coproducts in brake process. [30,31] The crosswalk and bus station not far from the sampling location (Figure 1) confirmed the frequency of braking activities. Pb, a kind of vehicle-related element, is nowadays mainly emitted from abrasion instead of fuel combustion since it has been banned in gasoline from 1996.…”

Source Apportionment of Fine Organic and Inorganic Atmospheric Aerosol in an Urban Background Area in Greece

“…Ni is also present in the factor, which might be an indication that this factor also includes some shipping emissions. Previous studies conducted in Patras have estimated that shipping emissions contributed approximately 4% to PM 10 [8]. The concentration of vanadium, a good tracer of shipping emissions, was below the detection limit for a large number of samples, and could not be used reliably as a tracer in the PMF analysis.…”

“…The spectrometer used is equipped with eight secondary targets (Al, CaF 2 , Fe, Ge, Zr, Mo, Al 2 O 3 , KBr, and LaB 6 ) that can polarize the X-ray tube-generated incident radiation through Barkla scattering. The methodology that was used for the elemental composition analysis is described in detail elsewhere [8]. The 20 elements determined by the ED-XRF method were Na, Mg, Al, Si, S, Cl, K, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Br, Sr, and Pb.…”

“…The process of identifying PM sources is called source apportionment and there is a wide range of methods that have been proposed based on the available measurements [6]. A widely used source apportionment approach is the use of various types of source-receptor models [7][8][9][10][11]. Most receptor models are based on the assumption that at the receptor site, the time dependence of the concentration of PM components originating from the same source will be the same.…”

Estimation of the Personal Deposited Dose of Particulate Matter and Particle-Bound Metals Using Data from Selected European Cities

“…Aerosol particles were collected on Tedlar foils, at 24 h sampling intervals. The collection substrates were greased with apiezon-L dissolved in toluene in order for the particle bounce off to be avoided and the metal content of airborne particles was determined by means of X-ray fluorescence system, Epsilon 5 by PANalytical [53].…”