Abstract
An improved method, factor analysis with non-negative constraints (FA-NNC) was adopted to apportion the sources of sediment polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Dalian Bay, China. Cosine similarity and Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis were used to assist the FA-NNC source resolution. The results identified three sources for PAHs, which were overall traffic, diesel engine emissions and residential coal combustion. The contributions of these sources were quantified as 78 ± 4.6% from overall traffic, 12 ± 3.2% from diesel engine emissions, and 10 ± 1.9% from residential coal combustion. The results from the Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis indicated that the model was robust and convergent.
Highlights
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), with two or more fused aromatic rings, are ubiquitous semi-volatile organic pollutants which are a significant public health and environmental concern [1].PAHs mainly originate from the incomplete combustion of organic matters, such as the combustion of fossil fuels in vehicular engines, power generation from fossil fuels, biomass burning, incineration of industrial and domestic wastes, oil refinery and chemical engineering processes [2]
Considering their degradation and unique source profiles, PAHs can serve as tracers of pollution sources [4]
The purpose of factor analysis model with non-negative constraints (FA-NNC) is to represent the total variability of the original PAH data in a minimum number of factors
Summary
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), with two or more fused aromatic rings, are ubiquitous semi-volatile organic pollutants which are a significant public health and environmental concern [1].PAHs mainly originate from the incomplete combustion of organic matters, such as the combustion of fossil fuels in vehicular engines, power generation from fossil fuels, biomass burning, incineration of industrial and domestic wastes, oil refinery and chemical engineering processes [2]. PAHs associated with air particulates, emitted from emission sources, are transported in the atmosphere and deposited through dry and wet deposition [3]. Receptor models have been used to apportion the contributions of PAHs from emission sources based on observations at sampling sites [5,6,7,8]. Factor analysis model with non-negative constraints (FA-NNC), has been adopted for the source apportionment of PAHs in various environmental media [9,10,11,12,13]. The sediment PAH concentrations, which are used as the input parameters of the model, are inherently variable [14]. Environmental variability and error result in the deviation of PAH concentrations. To assess the efficiency and accuracy of the model prediction, uncertainty analysis should be adopted to estimate the reliability
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