Abstract

Current methods for measuring black carbon aerosol (BC) by optical methods apportion BC to fossil fuel and wood combustion. However, these results are aggregated: local and non-local combustion sources are lumped together. The spatial apportioning of carbonaceous aerosol sources is challenging in remote or suburban areas because non-local sources may be significant. Air quality modeling would require highly accurate emission inventories and unbiased dispersion models to quantify such apportionment. We propose FUSTA (FUzzy SpatioTemporal Apportionment) methodology for analyzing aethalometer results for equivalent black carbon coming from fossil fuel (eBC(ff)) and wood combustion (eBC(wb)). We applied this methodology to ambient measurements at three suburban sites around Santiago, Chile, in the winter season 2021. FUSTA results showed that local sources contributed similar to 80% to eBC(ff) and eBC(wb) in all sites. By using PM2.5 - eBC(ff) and PM2.5 - eBC(wb) scatterplots for each fuzzy cluster (or source) found by FUSTA, the estimated lower edge lines showed distinctive slopes in each measurement site. These slopes were larger for non-local sources (aged aerosols) than for local ones (fresh emissions) and were used to apportion combustion PM2.5 in each site. In sites Colina, Melipilla and San Jose de Maipo, fossil fuel combustion contributions to PM2.5 were 26 % (15.9 mu g m(-3)), 22 % (9.9 mu g m(-3)), and 22 % (7.8 mu g m(-3)), respectively. Wood burning contributions to PM2.5 were 22 % (13.4 mu g m(-3)), 19 % (8.9 mu g m(-3)) and 22% (7.3 mu g m(-3)), respectively. This methodology generates a joint source apportionment of eBC and PM2.5, which is consistent with available chemical speciation data for PM2.5 in Santiago.