Source apportionment of ambient fine particle from combined size distribution and chemical composition data during summertime in Beijing

Continuous particle number concentration and chemical composition data were collected over one month during summertime in Beijing to investigate the source apportionment of ambient fine particles. Particle size distributions from 15 nm to 2.5 μm in diameter and composition data, such as organic matter, sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, chlorine, and gaseous pollutants, were analyzed using positive matrix factorisation (PMF) which indentified eight factors: cooking, solid mode exhaust, nucleation mode exhaust, accumulation mode, secondary nitrate, secondary sulfate, coal-fired power plant and road dust. Nearly two-thirds of particle number concentrations were attributed to cooking (22.8%) and motor vehicle (37.5%), whereas road dust, coal-fired power plant and regional sources contributed 69.0% to particle volume concentrations. Local and remote sources were distinguished using size distributions associated with each factor. Local sources were generally characterised by unimodal or bimodal number distributions, consisting mostly of particles less 0.1 μm in diameter, and regional sources were defined by mostly accumulation mode particles. Nearly one third of secondary nitrate and secondary sulfate was transported from the surrounding areas of Beijing during study period. Overall the introduction of combination of particle number concentration and chemical composition in PMF model is successful at separating the components and quantifying relative contributions to the particle number and volume population in a complex urban atmosphere.