An elaborate high resolution emission inventory of primary air pollutants for the Central Plain Urban Agglomeration of China

A high resolution emission inventory of primary air pollutants was developed based on the detailed collected activity data and the latest source-specific emission factors for the year 2010 in the Central Plain Urban Agglomeration (CPUA) region of China. The total emissions of SO2, NOx, PM10, PM2.5, CO, VOCs, and NH3 were estimated to be about 863.7 kt, 1058.2 kt, 1180.4 kt, 753.2 kt, 2854.3 kt, 466.1 kt, and 496.0 kt, respectively. Therein, power plants were demonstrated to be the largest sources for NOx, contributing about 36.1% of total emissions; industrial processes and biomass burning sources were proved to be the two major contributors of PM10, PM2.5 and VOCs emissions, together accounting for about 71.1%, 79.2% and 56.9% of the total emissions respectively. Besides, 18.4% of VOCs emissions can be explained by VOCs product-related sources. Other stationary combustion sources accounted for 57.7% of SO2 and 30.3% of CO emissions, respectively. Livestock and N-fertilizer application sources contributed about 81.0% of NH3 emissions together. Further, the emissions were spatially distributed into grid cells with a resolution of 3 km × 3 km, by using spatial allocation surrogates such as high resolution gridded population density and regional GDP. This inventory will benefit for policymakers and researchers to better understand the current situation of complex air pollution in the CPUA region of China and supply important necessary input for regional air quality modeling and policymaking.