PRIMARY AND SECONDARY ORGANIC AEROSOLS

Abstract

In this work are presented results from recent intensive field measurements conducted in the Po Valley region in the frame of the EC-funded EUCAARI project, where state-of-the-art instruments were run in parallel in the joint effort to quantitatively apportion the primary and secondary fractions of the organic aerosols (OA) and their origins. We focused on the results obtained by applying factor analysis methodologies (i.e. positive matrix factorization, PMF) to spectroscopic data such as those produced by aerosol mass spectrometry (AMS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) while aiming at OA source apportionment.

Keywords

• primary organic aerosol (POA)
• secondary organic aerosol (SOA)
• aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS)
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy
• Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF)
• biomass burning aerosol