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A novel biomass pyrogenic index and its application coupled with black carbon for improving polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon source identification

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Abstract

To accurately subdivide the sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the composition characteristics of 36 total polycyclic hydrocarbons (T-PAHs; 16 parent PAHs and 20 alkylated PAHs [A-PAHs]) in biomass-residue samples were analyzed. A novel biomass pyrogenic index (BPI) was defined based on A-PAH-fingerprinting differences between biomass-combustion and petroleum sources of PAHs and the sum of the concentrations of pyrene, fluoranthene, benzo[a]anthracene, and alkylated homologs) divided by the ∑value of EPA PAHs with 2–3 rings. BPIs of < 0.5 and > 0.5 indicated that the PAHs originated mainly from biomass combustion and petroleum, respectively. And the ∑targeted A-PAH pairs influencing the BPI/black carbon (BC) ratio was used to identify PAH sources in surface-sediment samples, using 0.5 as the threshold to distinguish between different sources across the strait. The columnar sediments were used to verify the accuracy of two source-identification methods. The results revealed that the main PAH sources changed since 2005, which is highly consistent with those obtained using positive matrix factors and a changing trend in the main types of local energy use. These results highlight the significance of A-PAHs in accurately identifying PAH sources and suggest that applying compositional differences in BC from different sources for PAH-source identification merits further study.

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All the data mentioned in this paper are generated in the lab. They will be available on request.

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Funding

All the funders are mentioned in the manuscript. The work received financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21627814 and 22276154).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science of China, College of the Environment & EcologyFujian Province, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361102, People’s Republic of China

    Xiang Wang, Shuai Guo & Yong Zhang

  2. City Management Bureau, Management Committee of Nanchang Economic and Technological Development Zone, Nanchang, 330000, People’s Republic of China

    Xiang Wang

  3. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation, College of Life Science, Taizhou University, Taizhou, 318000, People’s Republic of China

    Qi Huang

  4. Department of Chemistry, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, People’s Republic of China

    Yaxian Zhu

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  1. Xiang Wang
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  2. Shuai Guo
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  3. Qi Huang
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  4. Yaxian Zhu
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  5. Yong Zhang
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Contributions

Xiang Wang: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, and visualization. Shuai Guo: software, validation, and formal analysis. Qi Huang: software, validation, resources, visualization, and investigation. Yaxian Zhu: resources, data curation, visualization, project administration, and funding acquisition. Yong Zhang: conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Yong Zhang.

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Wang, X., Guo, S., Huang, Q. et al. A novel biomass pyrogenic index and its application coupled with black carbon for improving polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon source identification. Environ Monit Assess 195, 882 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-023-11494-1

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