Emission and Atmospheric Transport of Particulate PAHs in Northeast Asia

Abstract

The emission, concentration levels, and transboundary transport of particulate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Northeast Asia were investigated using particulate PAH measurements, the newly developed emission inventory (Regional Emission inventory in ASia for Persistent Organic Pollutants version, REAS-POP), and the chemical transport model (Regional Air Quality Model ver2 for POPs version, RAQM2-POP). The simulated concentrations of the nine particulate PAHs agreed well with the measured concentrations, and the results firmly established the efficacy of REAS/RAQM2-POP. It was found that the PAH concentrations in Beijing (China, source region), which were emitted predominantly from domestic coal, domestic biofuel, and other transformations of coal (including coke production), were approximately 2 orders of magnitude greater than those monitored at Noto (Japan, leeward region). In Noto, the PAH concentrations showed seasonal variations; the PAH concentrations were high from winter to spring due to contributions from domestic coal, domestic biofuel, and other transformations of coal, and low in summer. In summer, these contribution were decrease, instead, other sources, such as the on-road mobile source, were relatively increased compared with those in winter. These seasonal variations were due to seasonal variations in emissions from China, as well as transboundary transport across the Asian continent associated with meteorological conditions.

Regional modelling of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons: WRF-Chem-PAH model development and East Asia case studies

“…On the other hand, CHR shows the largest spatial and seasonal variations among these three compounds. Our predicted PAH distributions and particulate mass fractions generally agree with the previous studies in East Asia (Zhang et al, 2011b;Inomata et al, 2012).…”

“…3). The model well catches the observed daily average concentration of particulate BaP (observed 0.78 ng m −3 , simulated 0.78 ng m −3 ), while Inomata et al (2012) underestimated daily concentration of BaP in Beijing by about a factor of 2. The night and day mean levels of particulate BaP, 1.10 and 0.43 ng m −3 , respectively, are predicted as 1.37 and 0.14 ng m −3 , respectively.…”

“…The Spearman's rank correlation coefficients R use combined daytime and nighttime data sets. with 0.30-0.58 in Beijing (Xianghe is a semi-urban town in the Beijing metropolitan area) by Inomata et al (2012). This demonstrates the model's good capability in predicting the vertical and horizontal transport of PAH.…”

“…Eulerian chemical transport models have been developed and applied for regions, i.e. Europe (Aulinger et al, 2007;Matthias et al, 2009;Bieser et al, 2012;San Jose et al, 2013;Efstathiou et al, 2016), North America (Galarneau et al, 2014) and East Asia (Zhang et al, , 2011aInomata et al, 2012Inomata et al, , 2013, or on the global scale (Sehili and Lammel, 2007;Lammel et al, 2009;Friedman and Selin, 2012;Friedman et al, 2014a, b;Shen et al, 2014;Shrivastava et al, 2017). The aforementioned studies differ in many respects relating to the PAH species examined, the temporal variability of their emissions, the spatial and process resolutions of the models.…”

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Chinese surface soil: occurrence and distribution

“…Qomolangma,8,844.3 m a.s.l) and vast remote areas (e.g., the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau), which indicated the national wide pollution of PAHs in China (Tao et al 2011;Wang et al 2007). In addition to local and national influence across China, PAH pollution can also influence the neighbor countries and regions through long-range atmospheric transport (Inomata et al 2012;Lang et al 2008;Primbs et al 2008). …”