IDENTIFICATION AND QUANTIFICATION OF MOLECULAR MARKERS TO INDIVIDUATE THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOURCES IN PARTICULATE MATTER EMISSIONS

Nowadays, the atmospheric pollution entails a huge problem of public health and environmental conservation, increasing the necessity of creating new policies to regulate the emissions and to reduce the impact of this in the global climate. These characteristics make the aerosols the central topic of research in the current years. The composition of the particulate matter present in the atmosphere is so varied, being difficult to determine all the species present, and so, relate the pollution with precise sources. Aerosol particles are involved in several atmospheric processes, such as cloud formation, precipitation and in the change of the optical properties, enhancing the absorbing and scattering by the particles. They have an effect in the distribution and abundance of the trace gases due to the participation in heterogeneous chemical reactions In this work, we have direct the aim of the project to the development of extraction methods in order to improve the recovery of the different components and use new analytical techniques to obtain a more detailed characterization of molecular markers, molecules that can be linked to one emission source which help to identify them. The developed analytical techniques have been further applied to three different cases of study: - A full characterization of the components in an urban background site, with a special interest on the organic fraction and the characterization of single molecules that act as markers of specific sources of emission. - Analysis of the water soluble organic fraction in a rural site in the frame of the quantification of the contribution to the atmospheric pollution of biological aerosol. - Analysis of water soluble organic compounds in a marine environment to identify the effect of harbour activities in the air quality of the cities.