Identification

Title

Primary and secondary sources of formaldehyde in urban atmospheres: Houston Texas region

Abstract

We evaluate the rates of secondary production and primary emission of formaldehyde (CH₂O) from petrochemical industrial facilities and on-road vehicles in the Houston Texas region. This evaluation is based upon ambient measurements collected during field studies in 2000, 2006 and 2009. The predominant CH₂O source (92 ± 4% of total) is secondary production formed during the atmospheric oxidation of highly reactive volatile organic compounds (HRVOCs) emitted from the petrochemical facilities. Smaller contributions are primary emissions from these facilities (4 ± 2%), and secondary production (~3%) and primary emissions (~1%) from vehicles. The primary emissions from both sectors are well quantified by current emission inventories. Since secondary production dominates, control efforts directed at primary CH₂O emissions cannot address the large majority of CH₂O sources in the Houston area, although there may still be a role for such efforts. Ongoing efforts to control alkene emissions from the petrochemical facilities, as well as volatile organic compound emissions from the motor vehicle fleet, will effectively reduce the CH₂O concentrations in the Houston region. We do not address other emission sectors, such as off-road mobile sources or secondary formation from biogenic hydrocarbons. Previous analyses based on correlations between ambient concentrations of CH₂O and various marker species have suggested much larger primary emissions of CH₂O, but those results neglect confounding effects of dilution and loss processes, and do not demonstrate the causes of the observed correlations. Similar problems must be suspected in any source apportionment analysis of secondary species based upon correlations of ambient concentrations of pollutants.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7pk0gtr

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2012-04-05T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright Author(s) 2012. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-12-26T04:01:24.757222

Metadata language