Estimates of anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol formation in Houston, Texas

Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA) formation due to precursor emissions from anthropogenic sources in the Houston/Galveston (HG) area was estimated by multiplying the anthropogenic emissions of SOA precursors by fractional aerosol coefficients (FAC). The analysis indicated that area and nonroad mobile sources contributed 56% of the aerosol precursor emissions, while mobile and point sources contributed 27% and 16%, respectively. However, due to high SOA yields of the precursors emitted by point sources, especially emissions of terpenes from pulp and paper processing and emissions of aromatics, point source emissions resulted in 53% of the projected SOA from anthropogenic sources in the Houston-Galveston (HG) area. Estimated SOA formation rates were consistent with average concentrations of particle-phase organic carbon in the Houston-Galveston area.