THE USE OF FACTOR ANALYSIS IN SOURCE DETERMINATION OF PARTICULATE EMISSIONS

The development of multivariate statistical approaches to receptor models have focussed on factor analysis. Target transformation factor analysis (TTFA) offers the possibility of determining the number of sources and their elemental composition as well as their mass contributions. In this current work, a new approach is presented for calculating the mass contributions of each source to each sample. In addition an approach to estimating the uncertainties in the analysis is introduced. The method is applied to a subset of the Regional Air Pollution Study (RAPS) particulate composition data set for site 203 in July and August 1976. The data is divided into subsets covering the daylight (6 AM to 6 PM) or night (6 PM to 6 AM) samples. Similar source profiles are obtained for these subsets.