A method to quantify organic functional groups and inorganic compounds in ambient aerosols using attenuated total reflectance FTIR spectroscopy and multivariate chemometric techniques

An attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopic technique and a multivariate calibration method were developed to quantify ambient aerosol organic functional groups and inorganic compounds. These methods were applied to size-resolved particulate matter samples collected in winter and summer of 2004 at three sites: a downtown Phoenix, Arizona location, a rural site near Phoenix, and an urban fringe site between the urban and rural site. Ten organic compound classes, including four classes which contain a carbonyl functional group, and three inorganic species were identified in the ambient samples. A partial least squares calibration was developed and applied to the ambient spectra, and 13 functional groups related to organic compounds (aliphatic and aromatic CH, methylene, methyl, alkene, aldehydes/ketones, carboxylic acids, esters/lactones, acid anhydrides, carbohydrate hydroxyl and ethers, amino acids, and amines) as well as ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate were quantified. Comparison of the sum of the mass measured by the ATR-FTIR technique and gravimetric mass indicates that this method can quantify nearly all of the aerosol mass on sub-micrometer size-segregated samples. Analysis of sample results shows that differences in organic functional group and inorganic compound concentrations at the three sampling sites can be measured with these methods. Future work will analyze the quantified data from these three sites in detail.