Multi-pollutant emissions from the burning of major agricultural residues in China and the related health-economic effects

Li, Chunlin; Hu, Yunjie; Zhang, Fei; Chen, Jianmin; Ma, Zhen; Ye, Xingnan; Yang, Xin; Wang, Lin; Tang, Xingfu; Zhang, Renhe; Mu, Mu; Wang, Guihua; Kan, Haidong; Wang, Xinming; Mellouki, Abdelwahid

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4957-2017

Articles | Volume 17, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4957-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-4957-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 8

Research article

|

18 Apr 2017

Research article |

| 18 Apr 2017

Multi-pollutant emissions from the burning of major agricultural residues in China and the related health-economic effects

Chunlin Li, Yunjie Hu, Fei Zhang, Jianmin Chen, Zhen Ma, Xingnan Ye, Xin Yang, Lin Wang, Xingfu Tang, Renhe Zhang, Mu Mu, Guihua Wang, Haidong Kan, Xinming Wang, and Abdelwahid Mellouki

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Apr 2017)
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Preprint (discussion started on 30 Aug 2016)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Emissions', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Sep 2016
RC2: 'Referee comments: Multi-pollutants emissions from the burning of major agricultural residues in China and the related health-economic effect assessment by Li C. et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Nov 2016
- AC2: 'answer to review comment #2', Jianmin Chen, 29 Dec 2016
AC1: 'Answer to the review comments', Jianmin Chen, 29 Dec 2016

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Jianmin Chen on behalf of the Authors (29 Dec 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Jan 2017) by Chak K. Chan

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (05 Feb 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

This study investigates the emission factors of multi-pollutants from five major crop residues in China, and tries to estimate emission inventory and their corresponding health-economic effect. This revised version replied most of the technical questions. However, detailed explanations about the experimental design should be provided and the uncertainty of the results should be addressed also.

Additional comments
1) Line 201-205: I agree with the authors that pretreatment of biomass fuel in burning simulation is a practical and necessary procedure to ensure the result can be comparable with other studies under the defined conditions. But when the crop residues were dehydrated at 100 degree C for 24 hrs, very low moisture content were obtained compared with other studies, and it tends to have a much lower EFs as mentioned in the manuscript. Moreover, most crop residues are not well dried in a field except in the dry season. So what is the uncertainty when calculating emission factor and health economic effect if 2% water contents were used in this study?

2) Line 233-242: Were CO and CO2 measured by GC-FID continuously during the experiment? If yes, what is the time resolution of the repeated measurement? If no, when CO and CO2 were collected during the experiment? Moreover, please show the results of combustion efficiency in supplement information.

3) Line 244-254: What is the scam time of WPS? The startup transients may be missed due to the long scan time limitation. High time-resolution scans are recommended for future studies.

4) Line 336-344: As no calibration were carried out for soot/char classification, and TOT-NIOSH method may underestimate char-EC, leading to lower char-EC/soot-EC ratio. I don’t prefer to report char and soot EC results until more precise experiments will be conducted in the future.

5) Line 433-434: What is the theory behind the assumption that the burning rates were inverse proportional to peasants’ agricultural income proportion (AIP)?

6) Line 762-770: What is the objective to determine expulsion-accumulation coefficients of PAHs in OC in this study? Please explain the obtained results.

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ED: Reconsider after minor revisions (Editor review) (13 Feb 2017) by Chak K. Chan

AR by Jianmin Chen on behalf of the Authors (28 Feb 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (09 Mar 2017) by Chak K. Chan

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Short summary

Detailed emission factors for smoke particulate species in PM_2.5 and PM_1.0 were derived from laboratory simulation of crop straw burning using aerosol chamber systems. Based on this, emissions for crop residue field burning in China were calculated and characterized with respect to five different burning scenarios. Moreover, health effects and health-related economic loss from smoke particle exposure were assessed; a practical emission control policy for agricultural field burning was proposed.