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| Titel |
Investigation of the emissions and profiles of a wide range of VOCs during the Clean air for London project |
| VerfasserIn |
Rachel Holmes, Richard Lidster, Jacqueline Hamilton, James Lee, James Hopkins, Lisa Whalley, Alistair Lewis |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2014
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 16 (2014) |
| Datensatznummer |
250097579
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2014-13177.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The majority of the World’s population live in polluted urbanized areas. Poor air
quality is shortening life expectancy of people in the UK by an average 7-8 months
and costs society around £20 billion per year.[1] Despite this, our understanding
of atmospheric processing in urban environments and its effect on air quality is
incomplete. Air quality models are used to predict how air quality changes given
different concentrations of pollution precursors, such as volatile organic compounds
(VOCs).
The urban environment of megacities pose a unique challenge for air quality
measurements and modelling, due to high population densities, pollution levels and complex
infrastructure. For over 60 years the air quality in London has been monitored, however the
existing measurements are limited to a small group of compounds. In order to fully
understand the chemical and physical processes that occur in London, more intensive and
comprehensive measurements should be made. The Clean air for London (ClearfLo) project
was conducted to investigate the air quality, in particular the boundary layer pollution, of
London.
A relatively new technique, comprehensive two dimensional gas chromatography
(GCxGC) [2] was combined with a well-established dual channel GC (DC-GC) [3] system to
provide a more comprehensive measurement of VOCs. A total of 78 individual VOCs (36
aliphatics, 19 monoaromatics, 21 oxygenated and 2 halogenated) and 10 groups of VOCs (8
aliphatic, 1 monoaromatic and 1 monoterpene) from C1-C13+ were quantified. Seasonal and
diurnal profiles of these VOCs have been found which show the influence of emission source
and chemical processing. Including these extra VOCs should enhance the prediction
capability of air quality models thus informing policy makers on how to potentially improve
air quality in megacities.
References
1. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, Air Quality: A follow-up report,
Ninth Report of session 2012-12.
2. Lidster, R.T., J.F. Hamilton, and A.C. Lewis, The application of two total transfer valve
modulators for comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography of volatile organic
compounds. Journal of Separation Science, 2011. 34(7): p. 812-821.
3. Hopkins, J.R., C.E. Jones, and A.C. Lewis, A dual channel gas chromatograph for
atmospheric analysis of volatile organic compounds including oxygenated and
monoterpene compounds. Journal of Environmental Monitoring, 2011. 13(8): p. 2268-2276. |
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