A demonstrative study of a novel approach for spectral based source apportionment of ambient aerosols.

We present an alternative, spectral-based source apportionment model for calculating the mass concentration of wood burning and fossil fuel aerosols in the ambient. The model was applied to data collected from a rural area in Hungary during a 2-month continuous campaign in the winter period. The proposed model is based on the parallel measurement of the size distribution, absorption response of the ambient aerosols, and the thumb-of-rule relation between the elemental carbon (EC) and total carbon (TC) of fossil fuel and wood burning aerosols. We have experimentally demonstrated the wavelength dependency of the calculated Absorption Ängström Exponent (AAE) from the measured optical absorption coefficient (OAC) using the filter-accumulated transmission measurement method for the first time. The proposed model is compared with the traditional Aethalometer model applied to the same dataset. For comparison purposes, different but widely accepted approximations are used to determine source-specific AAE data and for the investigation of the effect of AAE on the output of the applied source apportionment models. The output of the applied models resulted in a close match with each other using site and source-specific AAE data.