A composite receptor and dispersion model approach for estimation of effective emission factors for vehicles

It is difficult to estimate vehicular emission factors at traffic junctions for use in dispersion modelling studies. Firstly, because the vehicles are in various modes of operation and secondly, it is difficult to delineate the effects of other contributing sources, mainly the effects of road dust and deposited constituents, which are very prominent at traffic junctions in India. Factor analysis-multiple regression (FA-MR), a receptor modelling technique has been used in this study for apportioning the contributing sources. The measurement data consist of one year's temporal variation of suspended particulate matter (SPM), analysed for its trace metal constituents, and two gaseous components NO₂ and SO₂ at two traffic junctions in Mumbai (India). FA-MR apportioned 40% of the observed SPM to road dust and 15% to vehicular sources. Of the total Pb observed in the SPM, FA-MR apportioned 60% to vehicular sources and 20% to road dust. The field-observed vehicular counts, meteorological parameters and road geometry were used in California line source dispersion model to estimate the effective vehicular emission factor for Pb at one traffic junction. This derived emission factor was used to predict the Pb concentration at second (independent observation) traffic junction. The result was found to be more satisfactory than using default emission factors obtained from literature. Similarly, effective vehicular emission factor for NO₂ was also evaluated for one site and tested for predicting concentrations at the other site.