Source Analysis of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Nanjing Industrial Area and Evaluation of Their Contribution to Ozone

Abstract

Ambient volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were continuously measured during the high ozone (O3) periods from May 1 to May 31 and June 1 to July 16, 2015 at an industrial area in the north suburb of Nanjing. A positive matrix factorization (PMF) model and an observation-based model (OBM) were combined for the first time to investigate the contributions of VOC sources and species to local photochemical O3 formation. The average VOC concentrations in 2014 and 2015 were (36.47±33.44)×10-9 and (34.69±34.08)×10-9, respectively. The VOC sources identified by the PMF model for 2014 and 2015 belonged to 7 source categories, including vehicular emissions, liquefied petroleum gas usage, biogenic emissions, furniture manufacturing industry, chemical industry, chemical coating industry, and chemical materials industry emission sources. The OBM was modified to assess the O3 precursors' relationships. Generally, photochemical O3 production was VOC limited, with positive relative incremental reactivity (RIR) values for VOC species and a negative RIR value for NO. It can be seen that alkenes (1.20-1.79) and aromatics (1.42-1.48) presented higher RIR values and controlling O3 would be the most effective when the VOC emissions from alkenes were reduced by 80%. Vehicle emissions (1.01-1.11), LPG (0.74-0.82), biogenic emissions (0.34-0.42), and furniture manufacturing industry (0.32-0.49) sources were the top four VOC sources making significant contributions to photochemical O3 formation, which suggests that controlling vehicle emissions, biogenic emissions, LPG, and furniture manufacturing industry sources should be the most effective strategy to reduce photochemical O3 formation.