Abstract
Advances in natural radiocarbon measurement techniques have made it feasible, for the first time, to assess the contribution of biogenic (contemporary) carbonaceous sources to individual chemical fractions in milligram quantities of atmospheric particles. Isotopic measurements for source reconciliation are doubly important when dealing with pure species, such as methane, carbon monoxide or elemental carbon, because they represent the only compositional information obtainable. Elemental carbon is of special interest in this regard because of changing energy patterns associated with both contemporary (wood-burning) and fossil (diesel fuel and unleaded gasoline) carbon. Following a review of the assumptions underlying the use of radiocarbon as a biogenic tracer and the status of minicounter and accelerator techniques for the assay of milligram and microgram samples, a survey is presented of recent observations on urban and rural carbonaceous particles. Results for these particles, which have been fractionated according to size or volatility, have exhibited the full range from fossil to biogenic source dominance.
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© 1982 Plenum Press, New York
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Currie, L.A. (1982). Contemporary Particulate Carbon. In: Wolff, G.T., Klimisch, R.L. (eds) Particulate Carbon. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4154-3_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-4154-3_14
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