Issue 4, 2013

Contribution to PM2.5 from domestic wood burning in a small community in Sweden

Abstract

Biomass burning for domestic heating has increased in many countries with cold climates in recent years. This paper presents and compares two ways of estimating the contribution of particulate matter (PM2.5) to ambient air from local domestic wood burning, using daily stationary parallel PM2.5 measurements in a wood-burning area and at a reference location. In the first method (based on air mass back trajectories), daily gravimetric PM2.5 mass differences were compared between the two stations for days with low contributions from regional sources. In the second method, 28 filters from each location were chemically analysed, and source contributions were calculated using positive matrix factorisation (PMF). The trajectory method estimated the extra local contribution from domestic wood burning in the wood-burning area to be 0.7–1.1 μg m−3, while the PMF method gave a contribution of 0.64 μg m−3. With the PMF method, the total contribution to ambient air from local domestic wood burning was estimated to be 25% of the total PM2.5 mass. The estimated mass contribution using the trajectory method gave a result similar to that of the PMF method, and the method can therefore be a time- and cost-effective first step, especially when no chemical analysis is possible.

Graphical abstract: Contribution to PM2.5 from domestic wood burning in a small community in Sweden

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Oct 2012
Accepted
14 Feb 2013
First published
18 Feb 2013

Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2013,15, 833-838

Contribution to PM2.5 from domestic wood burning in a small community in Sweden

P. Molnár and G. Sallsten, Environ. Sci.: Processes Impacts, 2013, 15, 833 DOI: 10.1039/C3EM30864B

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