Characterization in the discharge of plants, of atmospheric emission of black carbon
Abstract
Soot, also commonly called Black Carbon (BC) is a component mainly present in fine particles, which has an impact on human health and climate. It results from incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and from biomass. But the knowledge on the emission factors of the main sources requires to be improved, so as to be able to target the suitable reduction actions of emissions from industrial installations and domestic sources of combustion to be implemented. Today various techniques have been developed for the measurement of soot in ambient air, allowing the characterization of immissions, even if these methods do not show themselves fully equivalent, and if a harmonization of the practices and an improvement of the methods are still necessary. On the other hand the measurements of soot emissions due to combustions sources remain very limited, as in particular mentioned by the group of expert in charge of the preparation of the amendment of the Protocol of Goteborg, in which the soot was recently included. The gaps in the knowledge on black carbon emissions, and the uncertainties on the available data are mainly due to the absence of comparison between the applied methods, which uses generally remain rather limited to research purpose...