Hi
I am just wondering that most of the people use aethalometer model by Sandradewi et al 2008, while others use it with certain modification. In a recent research article by Liu et al 2018 (Source apportionment of black carbon during winter in Beijing) used the model for BC source apportionment. They category the sources into solid (wood+ coal burning) and liquid (fossil fuel combustion). I try to use the same model for source apportionment of BC for a high-altitude Himalayan valley type urban city, where there are three main sources of BC (wood burning, fossil fuel, and coal) during winters, spring and autumn while as only two sources (wood burning and fossil fuel) during summer.
Now the question is that the estimated BC from different sources vary up to 5% only in different seasons.
Is it possible or Am I doing some thing wrong while using different parameters in different phases of the model?
Thanks Hamit Can.
I used the same methodology as Sandradewi et al had applied in the above mentioned paper.
First, I'm not sure how you are separating the sources since coal should fall under the category of fossil fuels. Second, the Aethalometer model is essentially a two-component mixing model and is ideally used to separate fossil fuel (typically, coal) and biomass burning (typically, woodsmoke; that too assuming that UV absorption is only by organics from woodsmoke and not by other aerosol types) contributions to BC. Moreover, the model has well-known problems in accurately estimating woodsmoke (see Harrison et al. 2013. Atmos. Environ. 80, 540-548 for a discussion).
Dear Sayantan Sarkar
You are right, from most of the research work which uses the Aethalometer model for separating the BC from biomass burning and fossil fuel combustion. But one of the paper (in the attached file) had used the model for separating the BC from solid fuels (coal and wood) and liquid fuel (traffic emission) using this model. the base for this categorization is based on Alpha values. They found that the alpha value for coal and wood is almost similar (Approx. =2) hence they put them in one category (solid fuels) irrespective of the fact that one is fossil fuel and other is not.
During Winters in northwest Himalayan cities coal and biomass burning are two main sources of BC in addition to the traffic.
I also used the model for a year long data but didn't find insignificant proportion of BC (5% variation) along different seasons.
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