I have monitored PM10 in a city and analyzed about 30 chemical species associated with it. Further, I wanted to perform CMB and PMF analysis for source apportionment study.
My question is: As, I dont have Ca, Na, Cl and K concentration. Can I consider using Ca2+ concentration instead of Ca concentration, Na+ instead of Na, K+ instead of K, and Cl- instead of Cl?
@ Paul Milham. Sorry for the confusion. I wanted to mean an urban surrounding (city) having high population density with various types of air pollution sources such as Vehicular emission, dust resuspension, secondary particulates, industrial emission etc.
I don't see why you couldn't try Positive Matrix Factorisation (I don't have much experience with CMB). Depending on what you want to get out of the analysis, those ion concentrations might contribute to factors that could be meaningful in some way.
Having said that, 30 variables is probably a small enough number to just do some more basic analyses first (maybe you've already done this). Looking at diurnal trends (if time resolution allows), weekdays vs weekends, seasonal cycles in combination with wind velocity or even back-trajectory data can be pretty informative and relatively easy to do. Then seeing how the elements relate to each other using regression analysis and maybe something like principal component analysis could also be useful before jumping into PMF.
kThose more basic analyses would be pretty valuable in determining how many factors should be used in a PMF analysis and whether they are meaningful or not.
Good luck!
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