Date

2013

Author

Yalçın, Giyasettin Efdal

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The assessment of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has become an important field of interest in atmospheric pollution. This study quantifies and characterizes the ambient levels and spatial distribution of VOCs in urban and rural areas of Balıkesir. In addition, for the city drinking water dam excess flux from the traffic estimation was done. For these assessments passive sampling of VOCs performed at approximately 50 locations in and around the city of Balıkesir and analyzed with GC-FID system. Tenax TA was used as adsorbent. The sampling periods were in March of 2010 and in August of 2010 which were held for 7 days periods. 25 different compounds were analyzed for summer and winter periods and the most abundant species were compared with the literature. Benzene was measured 2.64 μg/m3 where Toluene was 10.90 μg/m3, Ethylbenzene was 1.30 μg/m3, m&p-Xylene was 1.80 μg/m3 and o-Xylene was 0.73 μg/m3 in average. The literature data was not split into summer and winter concentrations, therefore the average of winter and summer concentrations were taken. Balıkesir concentrations were lower than the industrialized cities Bursa and Kocaeli, where for the other European cities it differs. The median concentrations are also given for winter and summer samplings. Factor analysis technique is used on the data collected in the study site. Four factors were extracted where first three of them were identified as light-duty vehicles, solvent evaporation and diesel emissions. The last one is suspected to be agricultural vehicles.

Subject Keywords

Organic compounds., Volatile organic compounds., Air, Factor analysis.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12616543/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/22968

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis