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Characteristic, composition, and sources of TSP investigated by HRTEM/EDS and ESEM/EDS

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Abstract

Total suspended particle (TSP) collected at the fifth floor of House Dust in Hunan University, China, was analyzed in terms of microscopic morphology and chemical composition. The fine particles (50 nm–2 μm) in the TSP were analyzed by a high-resolution transmission electron microscope equipped with an energy-dispersive X-ray analyzer (HRTEM/EDS). Results showed that the particles were in shapes of plate, irregular and agglomerate. Based on EDS results, these fine particulate matter was primarily composed of Fe-rich (35.82–61.29%), Ca-rich (30.18–36.77%) and Si-rich (18.95–32.28%) particles. Other elements mainly including Mg (0.47–4.97%), Al (0.45–14.57%), S (0.45–4.73%), K (1.13–2.13%) and Zn (0.67–3.85%) were also observed. The sources analysis indicated that the HRTEM particles mainly originated from coal combustion, traffic emission, vehicles exhaust emission and fugitive soil or cement particulate matter. The coarse particles (4–50 μm) were detected by environmental scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray detector (ESEM/EDS). Based on a simple algorithm, ESEM particles were categorized into five groups: C-bearing (46.15%, 67% and 86.98%), Si + Ca-bearing (21.48 + 11.80%, 16.51 + 10.81% and 16.32 + 10.62%), Si + Al-bearing (20.06 + 12.40%, 20.16 + 11.22% and 15.31 + 11.25%), Si-bearing (34.40%, 26.92% and 27.15%) particles and aggregates, most of which exhibit obvious crystalline structure, and these ESEM particles mainly derived from vehicles exhaust emission, coal combustion, soil, and biomass burning, while the aggregates are indicative of atmospheric reaction progress. HRTEM/EDS and ESEM/EDS are mutual complementary in analyzing the characteristic and determining the sources of TSP.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (50908080, 51108169), Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (11JJ2032), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and Supported by Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (grant no. 20090161120042), the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences of Chinese Ministry of Education (grant no. 09YJC790078). The authors would like express their gratitude to Materials Testing Center Hunan University for providing testing instrument.

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  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Yunbo Zhai, Zongmin Fu, Guangming Zeng, Caiting Li, Hongmei Chen, Yuanming Lan & Pei Lu

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Biology and Pollution Control, Ministry of Education, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Yunbo Zhai, Zongmin Fu, Guangming Zeng, Caiting Li, Hongmei Chen, Yuanming Lan & Pei Lu

  3. School of Economics and Trade, Hunan University, Changsha, 410079, People’s Republic of China

    Lafang Wang

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  1. Yunbo Zhai
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  2. Zongmin Fu
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Zhai, Y., Fu, Z., Wang, L. et al. Characteristic, composition, and sources of TSP investigated by HRTEM/EDS and ESEM/EDS. Environ Monit Assess 184, 6693–6707 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-011-2452-5

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