Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net 1680-7367 1680-7375 9 3 2009 10.5194/acpd-9-13739-2009 http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13739/2009/ http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13739/2009/acpd-9-13739-2009.html http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/13739/2009/acpd-9-13739-2009.pdf 13739 13773 2009-06-22 Positive sampling artifact of carbonaceous aerosols and its influence on the thermal-optical split of OC/EC Y. Cheng chengyuan02@gmail.com K. B. He F. K. Duan M. Zheng Y. L. Ma J. H. Tan Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, China School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA Accurate measurement of carbonaceous aerosols is challenging, due to the sampling artifact and the problems of the split of OC/EC. Two approaches have been used to account for the positive artifact: backup quartz approach in which a backup quartz filter is placed either behind a front quartz filter (QBQ) or in a parallel port behind a Teflon filter (QBT), and organic denuder approach in which an organic denuder is placed upstream of the quartz filter. Both approaches were evaluated in Beijing, China, from January to February 2009. 10% of the OC captured by the bare quartz filter was from the positive artifact. The origin of backup OC was quantitatively evaluated by the denuder-based method. All of the QBQ-OC was from gaseous organics passing through the front filter, but the QBQ had not reached equilibrium with gas phase due to the relative small sampling volume resulting in an undercorrection of the positive artifact by 3.7%. QBT-OC was from both gaseous organics passing through the front filter (82%) and the evaporated organic carbon (18%), thus overcorrecting the positive artifact by 6.3%. 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