Elemental Analysis of Solid Aerosols Using AAS Technique And Estimation of their Effect on Atmospheric Radiation Budget

Atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) because of its selectivity, sensitivity, reproducibility and wide dynamic concentration range was used to find out the metal constituents and concentration for 6 metals in the atmosphere of Faisalabad. The aerosol samples were collected using air volume sampler on watmann filter paper for 24 hrs per day from June 2011 to June 2012. The maximum elemental constituents and concentration for Zn, Cu, Cr, Ni, Pb and Cd in mg/kg were found to be 127.88, 1955.77, 880.99, 2075.22, 2760.44, and 802.68 respectively. The comparison of results reported in literature with the obtained results showed some differences in concentrations which could be explained on the basis of climatological and meteorological set up of the area under exploration. An attempt has been made to investigate the properties of identified trace metals in terms of their radiative absorption coefficient and the global warming effect checked by analyzing TEM micrographs. The results obtained showed complex behavior and neutral trend as a whole. (author)