Abstract
Determination of carbonyl compounds emitted from car exhausts, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, acrolein, propionaldehyde and crotonaldehyde is vital in outside air of every highly populated city-center including Prague. The sampling site was a highly car frequented and densely populated Prague street. Two types of vehicles from the second largest car manufacturer (Hyundai Motor Company) were selected for the assessment of carbonyl compounds emission. Some of the emitted components from fuel combustion are classified as carcinogenic and/or mutagenic to humans in addition to having other harmful environmental effects.
Highlights
Determination of carbonyl compounds emitted from car exhausts, such as formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, acrolein, propionaldehyde and crotonaldehyde is vital in outside air of every highly populated city-center including Prague
We can observe that from the exhaust emissions of the gasoline engine both acrolein and propionaldehyde were detected at very low concentrations. These results indicate a much higher limit of detection when applying Mass Spectrometric (MS)-ESI (-) detection compared to Diode Array Detector (DAD) detection
The response of the calibration curves of the liquid working standards after UV detection was linear with correlation factors of at least 0.999
Summary
Air quality is affected by both biogenic and anthropogenic sources of atmospheric contamination [1]. Having concerns about air quality of densely populated cities like Prague, this work focuses on determining carbonyl emissions from vehicle exhausts and their concentration in urban atmosphere, sampled in a highly frequented Prague street. The generated gaseous samples in canisters (SilicoCan, maximum pressure 40 psig, Restek, USA) contained formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, propionaldehyde and crotonaldehyde. Calculated volumes (about 3.5μl) of pure formaldehyde, acetaldehyde, acetone, propionaldehyde and crotonaldehyde were injected into a 250ml bottle with an atmosphere of 50% relative humidity. The calculated volumes of carbonyl compounds were injected individually into the bottle that was kept during the whole process at 50 °C Subsequently, the bottle was tempered for 30min more at 50 °C. Separation was performed by HPLC (HPLC TSQ Quantum Access Mas, Thermo Scientific, USA) This scheme allows direct injection of an aliquot of the sample to the chromatographic column. Individual compound determination for comparative purposes has been carried out using both UV-DAD and MS detection
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