Source apportionment of PM10 carbonaceous aerosol collected in Hungarian cities, using tracer analytical methods

The environmental and health-damaging effects of “high aerosol concentration” periods often represent an issue in Hungary, which is mainly due to the country's location (basin is within the Carpathians). The main sources of carbonaceous aerosol are already more or less known, but the numerical extent and temporal distribution of the contributions are still the subject of numerous investigations in the region. In these researches, isotopic analytical procedures are increasingly involved, which, in addition to traditional analytical methods, enable us to make more and more accurate source apportionment analyses. By means of the radiocarbon method, the modern and fossil fuel sources can unambiguously be separated, while levoglucosan can be used as tracer to distinguish the two largest modern sources i.e. biological emissions and anthropogenic wood burning. In the first half of 2015, a comprehensive PM10 collection campaign in five big cities (Budapest, Debrecen, Miskolc, Pécs, Nyíregyháza) was completed, financed by the Hungarian state. Its purpose was to identify the most relevant emission sources and quantify their contributions as accurately as possible. In the course of the analyses, mass concentration of the total, organic and elemental carbon (TC, OC, EC, respectively) of the collected samples were determined, in addition, the specific ¹⁴C activity and levoglucosan concentration of TC were also measured. Our studies clearly revealed the predominance of the anthropogenic wood burning source in the winter/heating period, but the contribution of biological sources ranged in a broader scale during the observation period. Contrarily, the contributions from fossil sources were relatively balanced for the same period.