Study of PM2.5 in Beijing suburban site by neutron activation analysis and source apportionment

Airborne particulate matter (APM) was collected in coarse fraction and in PM2.5 during spring of 2002 in Beijing suburban sampling site by Gent SFU sampler. More attention has been paid to the special "events" such as dust, storm and haze. Taking advantage of the combination of thermal or epithermal neutron irradiation with Compton suppression spectrometer system, twenty elemental (Al, Si, Ca, K, Dy, Cu, I, In, Ba, W, Sn, Sb, As, Ti, Br, V, Mn, Cl, Na, Zn) concentration were determined. Among them, several key trace elements that cannot be accomplished by the traditional neutron activation analysis (NAA) were determined. The analysis of trace elemental concentration in PM2.5 shows that the anthropogenic elements such as As, In, Sn, Sb have different trends than crustal elements. The back-trajectories of the high concentration anthropogenic pollution elements revealed their source region. Six potential sources were resolved by positive matrix factorization (PMF), two area type and four source type, as soil, limestone quarry, crop burning and mixture of residue motor and coal burning sampling sites. Taking into account of everyday air particle back trajectories, source compositions together with source regions were also identified.