Application of the ECT9 protocol for radiocarbon-based source apportionment of carbonaceous aerosols

• Main Authors: Huang, Lin, Zhang, Wendy, Santos, Guaciara M., Rodríguez, Blanca T., Holden, Sandra R., Vetro, Vincent, Czimczik, Claudia I.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2020
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-2020-201; https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2020-201/

Carbonaceous aerosol is mainly composed of organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC). Both OC and EC originate from a variety of emission sources. Radiocarbon ( 14 C) analysis can be used to apportion bulk aerosol, OC, and EC into their sources. However, such analyses require the physical separation of OC and EC. Here, we apply of ECT9 protocol to physically isolate OC and EC for 14 C analysis and evaluate its effectiveness. Several reference materials are selected, including: two pure OC (fossil <q>adipic acid</q>, contemporary <q>sucrose</q>), two pure EC (fossil <q>regal black</q> and <q>C1150</q>), and three complex materials containing contemporary and/or fossil OC and EC (<q>rice char</q> and NIST urban dust standards <q>SRM1649a</q>, i.e., bulk dust and <q>SRM8785</q>, i.e., fine fraction of re-suspended SRM1649a on filter). The pure materials were measured for their OC, EC and total carbon (TC) mass fractions and corresponding carbon isotopes to evaluate the uncertainty of the procedure. The average accuracy of TC mass, determined via volumetric injection of a sucrose solution, was approximately 5 %. Ratios of EC/TC and OC/TC were highly reproducible, with analytical precisions better than 2 % for all reference materials, ranging in size from 20 to 100 µg C. Consensus values were reached for all pure reference materials for both δ 13 C and FM 14 C with an uncertainty of < 0.3 ‰ and approximately 5%, respectively. The procedure introduced 1.3 ± 0.6 µg of extraneous carbon, an amount compatible to that of the Swiss_4S protocol. 14 C values were reached for all OC (~ 5–30 µg) and EC (~ 10–60 µg) fractions with an uncertainty of < 5 %. We found that the ECT9 protocol efficiently isolates OC or EC from complex mixtures. Based on %delta; 13 C measurements, the average contribution of charred OC to EC is likely less than 3 % when the OC loading amount is less than 30 µg C. Charring was further assessed by evaluating thermograms of various materials, including aerosol samples collected in the Arctic and from tailpipes of gasoline or diesel engines. These data demonstrate that the ECT9 method effectively removes pyrolyzed OC. Thus, the ECT9 protocol, initially developed for concentration and stable isotope measurements of OC and EC, is suitable for 14 C-based apportionment studies for environment samples, including µg C-sized samples from Arctic environments.