Source Apportionment of Particulate Air Pollution and Percentage Contribution of PM10 and PM2.5 Using Chemical Mass Balance (CMB) Method

Abstract

The study is to analyze the concentration of particulate pollutants level and its monitoring, there fore suggesting controlling measures of particulate pollution at Virudhunagar in Tamilnadu. This work summarized the results of a series of comprehensive studies on particulate matter carried out in study area from 2010 to 2011. The air quality has been categorized into four broad categories based on an Exceedence Factor (EF) of measured concentration of pollutants. It could be seen from the categorization, that all the study sites were violating the standards, although, with varying magnitude. The concentration of particulate matter PM 10 and PM 2.5 was statistically analyzed and higher concentration of pollutants observed during the months of April and May. Overall high concentration of particulates observed during summer at site 2. There is no considerable variation of concentration of particulates was observed at site 3 during all the three seasons. In the available receptor models, chemical mass balance(CMB) method was utilized for this study. This modeling involves quantitative assessment of source contributions to the measured ambient samples based on the degree to which source profiles can be combined to produce ambient concentrations. Particulate samples collected from all the three locations were subjected to chemical speciation. The composition of the data was analyzed and divided into three categories to correlate with the sources. Sources identified as major contributors to particulate pollution were fugitive dust on roads and construction sites, vehicular exhaust, biomass burning at residential and road side trash. The monitoring and analysis results were utilized to strengthen the need for a faster and effective pollution control action plan for the study area.