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THE OPTIMIZATION OF THERMAL OPTICAL ANALYSIS FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF BLACK CARBON IN REGIONAL PM2.5: A CHEMOMETRIC APPROACH REPORT
Citation:
U.S. EPA, AND J. M. Conny. THE OPTIMIZATION OF THERMAL OPTICAL ANALYSIS FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF BLACK CARBON IN REGIONAL PM2.5: A CHEMOMETRIC APPROACH REPORT. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-07/119 (NTIS PB2007-114771), 2007.
Impact/Purpose:
The goal of this task is to develop methods and models to reduce the uncertainty in quantifying local and regional air pollutant source impacts on ambient samples collected in speciated PM, air toxic, and semi-continuous measurement networks. A combination of high resolution sampling, organic and inorganic analytical methods, and models will be developed and evaluated to reduce the uncertainty in source apportionment:
(1) semi-continuous inorganic species sampling
(2) inorganic analysis
(3) organic analysis for medium flow samples
(4) multivariate receptor models for ambient samples
(5) regional and local models
In addition, this task contributes to two additional tasks that have research focused on reducing the uncertainty in source apportionment: Identify Sources of Human Exposure (21176), and NAAQS implementation (21179).
Description:
In thermal-optical analysis (TOA), particulate organic carbon (OC) as well as black carbon (BC) must be quantified. Both the BC that is native to the filter and instrument-produced OC char are products of incomplete combustion and have similar optical as well as chemical properties.