Background
Considering the growing transport demand, collective and immediate actions must be taken to abate emissions and mitigate their environmental and health impacts. Very fine particle emissions, and the formation of secondary aerosols through atmospheric processing, are believed to be the pollutant with significant public health impact. The organic fraction of particle emissions from road transport can derive from thousands of different hydrocarbons in unburned fuel and engine lubricating oil and contains compounds resulting from partial combustion and pyrolysis.
The presence of some heavier hydrocarbons called intermediate-/semi-volatile organic compounds can result in uncertainty in physico-chemical characterisation of particle emissions when using conventional methodologies. Therefore, there is a need to develop robust and transparent methodologies to characterise these compounds, their behaviour, their climate, air quality, and health impacts, and how to abate them.
