Estimation of particle concentrations from tyre and brake wear in an urban environment
- 1University of Hamburg, Meteorological Institute, 20146 Hamburg, Germany (mailin.samland@uni-hamburg.de)
- 2Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, Institute of Coastal Environmental Chemistry, 21502 Geesthacht, Germany
- 3University of Hamburg, CEN, Meteorological Institute, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Air pollution is threatening human health worldwide, especially in urban areas. Legislative actions have successfully decreased pollutant concentrations in European countries. However, while exhaust emissions from road traffic have decreased over the last decades, non-exhaust emissions remain and tend to increase.
In this study, tyre and brake wear emissions are quantified applying a bottom-up model for the city of Hamburg in 2018. Their dispersion and contribution to total particulate matter (PM) concentrations are investigated with the urban scale chemistry transport model EPISODE-CityChem. For this purpose, EPISODE-CityChem 1.8 has been extended to include six new particle components. These are tyre and brake wear in the three size classes: PM2.5, PM2.5-10 and PM10+, airborne particles with a diameter of over 10 µm. The emission factors for PM10 for tyre and brake wear from the National Atmospheric Emission Inventory of the UK are used as a starting point to derive the emission factors for the new particle classes. These are combined with the mass size distribution of the total suspended particles from EMEP.
PM concentrations at traffic stations show a higher monthly mean contribution of tyre and brake wear to the total PM2.5 and PM10 than at urban background stations. The contribution of tyre and brake wear to the total PM2.5 concentrations varies throughout the months between 9% and 16% at traffic stations and between 2% and 6% at urban background stations.
The particle concentrations from tyre and brake wear vary locally and seasonally, which could be a difficulty in adhering to the recommended guideline values for particle concentrations, especially since the inner city of Hamburg experiences considerable PM concentrations caused by tyre and brake wear emissions.
The results of this study can be transferred to other large European cities with high traffic volumes and can help to understand the problem's scope, as measurements rarely differentiate between particles caused by exhaust vs. non-exhaust emissions.
How to cite: Samland, M., Badeke, R., Grawe, D., and Matthias, V.: Estimation of particle concentrations from tyre and brake wear in an urban environment, EMS Annual Meeting 2024, Barcelona, Spain, 1–6 Sep 2024, EMS2024-923, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2024-923, 2024.
