Chemical composition, optical properties, and oxidative potential of water- and methanol-soluble organic compounds emitted from the combustion of biomass materials and coal
<p>Biomass burning (BB) and coal combustion (CC) are important sources of brown carbon (BrC) in ambient aerosols. In this study, six biomass materials and five types of coal were combusted to generate fine smoke particles. The BrC fractions, including water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC), humic...
Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2021-09-01
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Series: | Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics |
Online Access: | https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/21/13187/2021/acp-21-13187-2021.pdf |
Summary: | <p>Biomass burning (BB) and coal combustion (CC) are important sources of brown
carbon (BrC) in ambient aerosols. In this study, six biomass materials and
five types of coal were combusted to generate fine smoke particles. The BrC
fractions, including water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC), humic-like
substance carbon (HULIS-C), and methanol-soluble organic carbon (MSOC), were
subsequently fractionated, and their optical properties and chemical
structures were then comprehensively investigated using UV–visible
spectroscopy, proton nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (<span class="inline-formula"><sup>1</sup></span>H NMR),
and fluorescence excitation–emission matrix (EEM) spectroscopy combined with
parallel factor (PARAFAC) analysis. In addition, the oxidative potential
(OP) of BB and CC BrC was measured with the dithiothreitol (DTT) method. The
results showed that WSOC, HULIS-C, and MSOC accounted for 2.3 %–22 %,
0.5 %–10 %, and 6.4 %–73 % of the total mass of combustion-derived
smoke PM<span class="inline-formula"><sub>2.5</sub></span>, respectively, with MSOC extracting the highest
concentrations of organic compounds. The MSOC fractions had the highest
light absorption capacity (mass absorption efficiency at 365 nm
(MAE<span class="inline-formula"><sub>365</sub></span>): 1.0–2.7 m<span class="inline-formula"><sup>2</sup></span>/gC) for both BB and CC smoke, indicating
that MSOC contained more of the strong light-absorbing components.
Therefore, MSOC may represent the total BrC better than the water-soluble
fractions. Some significant differences were observed between the BrC
fractions emitted from BB and CC with more water-soluble BrC fractions with
higher MAE<span class="inline-formula"><sub>365</sub></span> and lower absorption Ångström exponent values
detected in smoke emitted from BB than from CC. EEM-PARAFAC identified four
fluorophores: two protein-like, one humic-like, and one polyphenol-like fluorophores. The
protein-like substances were the dominant components of WSOC
(47 %–80 %), HULIS-C (44 %–87 %), and MSOC (42 %–70 %). The
<span class="inline-formula"><sup>1</sup></span>H-NMR results suggested that BB BrC contained more oxygenated
aliphatic functional groups (<span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M7" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow class="chem"><mi mathvariant="normal">H</mi><mo>-</mo><mi mathvariant="normal">C</mi><mo>-</mo><mi mathvariant="normal">O</mi></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="42pt" height="11pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="ea6d310d597e63d28276ecf8982a35b9"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="acp-21-13187-2021-ie00001.svg" width="42pt" height="11pt" src="acp-21-13187-2021-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg></span></span>), whereas CC BrC contained more
unsaturated fractions (<span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M8" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow class="chem"><mi mathvariant="normal">H</mi><mo>-</mo><mi mathvariant="normal">C</mi><mo>-</mo><mi mathvariant="normal">C</mi><mo>=</mo></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="49pt" height="11pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="7416ee3c5a7b4a25416064a588edbf9b"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="acp-21-13187-2021-ie00002.svg" width="49pt" height="11pt" src="acp-21-13187-2021-ie00002.png"/></svg:svg></span></span> and <span class="inline-formula">Ar−H</span>). The DTT assays indicated that BB
BrC generally had a stronger oxidative potential (DTT<span class="inline-formula"><sub>m</sub></span>, 2.6–85 pmol/min/<span class="inline-formula">µ</span>g) than CC BrC (DTT<span class="inline-formula"><sub>m</sub></span>, 0.4–11 pmol/min/<span class="inline-formula">µ</span>g), with
MSOC having a stronger OP than WSOC and HULIS-C. In addition, HULIS-C
contributed more than half of the DTT activity of WSOC (63.1 % <span class="inline-formula">±</span> 15.5 %), highlighting that HULIS was a major contributor of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production
in WSOC. Furthermore, the principal component analysis and Pearson
correlation coefficients indicated that highly oxygenated humic-like
fluorophore C4 may be the important DTT active substances in BrC.</p> |
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ISSN: | 1680-7316 1680-7324 |