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Quantitative Functional Group Compositions of Household Fuel Burn Emissions
Citation:
Li, E., A. Yazdani, A. Dillner, G. Shen, W. Champion, J. Jetter, William Preston, L. Russell, M. Hays, AND S. Takahama. Quantitative Functional Group Compositions of Household Fuel Burn Emissions. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. Copernicus Publications, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, 17:2401-2413, (2024). https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-17-2401-2024
Impact/Purpose:
In the current study, we used FTIR to quantify the organic functional group (FG) composition of PM2.5 emissions from cookstoves collected on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) filters. We found that OC estimates from FTIR measurements and regression modeling are in good agreement with those from thermal optical transmittance (TOT). Our analysis highlighted spectral differences between unburned fuels (charcoal, kerosene, red oak wood, alcohol, and liquefied petroleum gas) and their particulate emissions during combustion. Estimates of aromatics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from FTIR measurements of particulate emissions from charcoal, kerosene, and red oak wood were also in good in agreement with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GS-MS) measurements. This kind of data has been previously unavailable for primary source emissions.
Description:
Globally, billions of people burn fuels indoors for cooking and heating, which contributes to millions of chronic illnesses and premature deaths annually. Additionally, residential burning contributes significantly to black carbon emissions, which have the highest global warming impacts after carbon dioxide and methane. In this study, we use Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to analyze fine-particulate emissions collected on Teflon membrane filters from 15 cookstove types and 5 fuel types. Emissions from three fuel types (charcoal, kerosene, and red oak wood) were found to have enough FTIR spectral response for functional group (FG) analysis. We present distinct spectral profiles for particulate emissions of these three fuel types. We highlight the influential FGs constituting organic carbon (OC) using a multivariate statistical method and show that OC estimates by collocated FTIR and thermal–optical transmittance (TOT) are highly correlated, with a coefficient determination of 82.5 %. As FTIR analysis is fast and nondestructive and provides complementary FG information, the analysis method demonstrated herein can substantially reduce the need for thermal–optical measurements for source emissions.
