Articles | Volume 21, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-2329-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-2329-2021
Research article
 | 
17 Feb 2021
Research article |  | 17 Feb 2021

Brown carbon's emission factors and optical characteristics in household biomass burning: developing a novel algorithm for estimating the contribution of brown carbon

Jianzhong Sun, Yuzhe Zhang, Guorui Zhi, Regina Hitzenberger, Wenjing Jin, Yingjun Chen, Lei Wang, Chongguo Tian, Zhengying Li, Rong Chen, Wen Xiao, Yuan Cheng, Wei Yang, Liying Yao, Yang Cao, Duo Huang, Yueyuan Qiu, Jiali Xu, Xiaofei Xia, Xin Yang, Xi Zhang, Zheng Zong, Yuchun Song, and Changdong Wu

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Subject: Aerosols | Research Activity: Laboratory Studies | Altitude Range: Troposphere | Science Focus: Physics (physical properties and processes)
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Cited articles

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Andreae, M. O. and Gelencsér, A.: Black carbon or brown carbon? The nature of light-absorbing carbonaceous aerosols, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 6, 3131–3148, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-6-3131-2006, 2006. 
Arola, A., Schuster, G., Myhre, G., Kazadzis, S., Dey, S., and Tripathi, S. N.: Inferring absorbing organic carbon content from AERONET data, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 11, 215–225, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-11-215-2011, 2011. 
Arshanitsa, A., Akishin, Y., Zile, E., Dizhbite, T., Solodovnik, V., and Telysheva, G.: Microwave treatment combined with conventional heating of plant biomass pellets in a rotated reactor as a high rate process for solid biofuel manufacture, Renew. Energ., 91, 386–396, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.01.080, 2016. 
Aurell, J. and Gullett, B. K.: Emission factors from aerial and ground measurements of field and laboratory forest burns in the southeastern US: PM2.5, black and brown carbon, VOC, and PCDD/PCDF, Environ. Sci. Technol., 47, 8443–8452, https://doi.org/10.1021/es402101k, 2013. 
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Brown carbon (BrC) emission factors from household biomass fuels were measured with an integrating sphere optics approach supported by iterative calculations. A novel algorithm to directly estimate the absorption contribution of BrC relative to that of BrC + black carbon (FBrC) was proposed based purely on the absorption exponent (AAE) (FBrC = 0.5519 lnAAE + 0.0067). The FBrC for household biomass fuels was as high as 50.8 % across the strongest solar spectral range of 350−850 nm.
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