Abstract
To accurately subdivide the sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the composition characteristics of 36 total polycyclic hydrocarbons (T-PAHs; 16 parent PAHs and 20 alkylated PAHs [A-PAHs]) in biomass-residue samples were analyzed. A novel biomass pyrogenic index (BPI) was defined based on A-PAH-fingerprinting differences between biomass-combustion and petroleum sources of PAHs and the sum of the concentrations of pyrene, fluoranthene, benzo[a]anthracene, and alkylated homologs) divided by the ∑value of EPA PAHs with 2–3 rings. BPIs of < 0.5 and > 0.5 indicated that the PAHs originated mainly from biomass combustion and petroleum, respectively. And the ∑targeted A-PAH pairs influencing the BPI/black carbon (BC) ratio was used to identify PAH sources in surface-sediment samples, using 0.5 as the threshold to distinguish between different sources across the strait. The columnar sediments were used to verify the accuracy of two source-identification methods. The results revealed that the main PAH sources changed since 2005, which is highly consistent with those obtained using positive matrix factors and a changing trend in the main types of local energy use. These results highlight the significance of A-PAHs in accurately identifying PAH sources and suggest that applying compositional differences in BC from different sources for PAH-source identification merits further study.
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All the funders are mentioned in the manuscript. The work received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21627814 and 22276154).
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Xiang Wang: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, and visualization. Shuai Guo: software, validation, and formal analysis. Qi Huang: software, validation, resources, visualization, and investigation. Yaxian Zhu: resources, data curation, visualization, project administration, and funding acquisition. Yong Zhang: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition.
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Wang, X., Guo, S., Huang, Q. et al. A novel biomass pyrogenic index and its application coupled with black carbon for improving polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon source identification. Environ Monit Assess 195, 882 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11494-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11494-1