A European aerosol phenomenology - 9: Light absorption properties of carbonaceous aerosol particles across surface Europe.

Carbonaceous aerosols (CA), composed of black carbon (BC) and organic matter (OM), significantly impact the climate. Light absorption properties of CA, particularly of BC and brown carbon (BrC), are crucial due to their contribution to global and regional warming. We present the absorption properties of BC (b) and BrC (b) inferred using Aethalometer data from 44 European sites covering different environments (traffic (TR), urban (UB), suburban (SUB), regional background (RB) and mountain (M)).

Large eddy simulation of the dispersion of short duration emissions: Implications for the metrological evaluation of remote sensing devices for on-road emissions monitoring.

Remote sensing techniques have emerged as valuable tools for characterizing pollutant emissions from large vehicle fleets and identifying high emitter single vehicles in real driving conditions. Nevertheless, the use of these systems for official emission control purposes by public administrations is an issue because the remote sensing devices must obtain official metrological certification, which currently lacks an international technical standard. The fluid dynamic study that we present demonstrates the promising potential of using pulsed synthetic reference plumes of known chemical composition in order to simulate exhaust emissions produced by combustion engine vehicles in a repetitive and controlled way.

Potential ambient NO abatement by applying photocatalytic materials in a Spanish city and analysis of short-term effect on human mortality.

Road traffic is the main contributor to NO emissions in many European cities, causing that the current limit values for the protection of human health are exceeded. The use of photocatalytic compounds that incorporate titanium dioxide (TiO) is frequently proposed as abatement technology but its depolluting effectiveness on a real scale is still being investigated. In this work, the potential removal capacity of NO that selected TiO-based materials would have if they were implemented in a street in the municipality of Alcobendas (Community of Madrid, Spain) has been evaluated.

Size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions using positive matrix factorization.

A novel on-board system was tested to characterize size-resolved particle number emission patterns under real-world driving conditions, running in a EURO4 diesel vehicle and in a typical urban circuit in Madrid (Spain). Emission profiles were determined as a function of driving conditions. Source apportionment by Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) was carried out to interpret the real-world driving conditions.