Secondary organic aerosol formation in China from urban-lifestyle sources: Vehicle exhaust and cooking emission

An increasing number of people tend to live in cities, where they suffer from serious air pollution from anthropogenic sources. Vehicle exhaust and cooking emission are closely related to daily life of urban residents, and could be defined as urban-lifestyle sources. The primary emissions of urban-lifestyle sources tend to form abundant secondary organic aerosols (SOA) through complicated atmospheric chemistry processes. The newly formed SOA is a kind of complex mixture and causes considerable health effects with high uncertainty. Most studies focus on formation pathway, mass growth potential and chemical feature of urban-lifestyle SOA under simple laboratory conditions. Few studies have measured the urban-lifestyle SOA in ambient air, let alone verified laboratory findings under complicated atmo-spheric conditions. In this work, we established a new method that combined laboratory simulation and field observa-tion, which quantified the urban-lifestyle SOA with high time resolution under the real atmospheric condition. The complex SOA was measured and resolved by a high-resolution time-of -flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS). The multilinear engine model (ME-2) and multilinear correction methods were used to apply laboratory results into ambient SOA apportionment. It was found that the vehicle source dominated the SOA formation during the diur-nal photochemical process, and the SOA:POA ratio of vehicle source was about 1.4 times larger than that of cooking source. The vehicle emission may undergo an alcohol/peroxide & carboxylic acid oxidation pathway and form higher oxidized SOA, while the cooking emission may undergo an alcohol/peroxide oxidation pathway and form relatively lower oxidized SOA. The vehicle SOA and cooking SOA contributed 45.6 % and 24.8 % of OA during a local episode in 2021 winter of downtown Beijing. Our findings could not only provide a new way to quantify urban SOA but also demonstrate some laboratory hypotheses, conducing to understand its ambient contributions, chemical features, and environmental effects.

Automated summary

Researchers quantified the secondary organic aerosols (SOA) produced by urban-lifestyle sources under real atmospheric conditions through a combination of laboratory simulation and field observation. They found that vehicle emissions were the dominant source of SOA formation during daytime photochemical processes, and the SOA:POA ratio of vehicle emissions was about 1.4 times larger than that of cooking emissions. These findings not only provide a new approach to quantify urban SOA, but also validate laboratory hypotheses and contribute to understanding the ambient contributions, chemical characteristics, and environmental effects of urban-lifestyle SOA.