Monitoring of black carbon concentration at an inland rural area including fixed sources in Korea

We monitored black carbon (BC) concentration for 6 months to understand the characteristics of atmospheric aerosols of an inland rural area in Korea. A multi-angle absorption photometer was used to continuously monitor the BC concentration, which was compared with elemental carbon (EC) concentration measured by an OC/EC Analyzer. For the atmospheric aerosols less than 10 μm, size distributions were measured using both an optical particle counter and a scanning mobility particle sizer. The diurnal variations for BC concentration show that the average BC concentration was 1.43 μg m−3 and exhibited peaks in the morning rush hours. However, the BC concentration measured at night from 20:00 to 08:00 was higher than that measured during the day. The reason why the BC concentration at night was higher would be partly due to the regional characteristics influenced by the combination of local fixed sources and traffic condition. It is suggested that the traffic and transporting of pollutants from the west influenced the increase in the BC concentration at inland rural area including fixed sources.