The Use of GC/MS Methods for Chemically Characterizing Biomass-Burning Aerosols (2023)

Undergraduate: Adrienne Lambert

Faculty Advisor: Jason Surratt
Department: Environmental Sciences and Engineering

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Africa has been overlooked when it comes to researching Biomass-Burning Emissions (1). The chemical characterization of African-specific fuels is important to understanding the possible chemical reactions that can form compounds dangerous to human health (3 & 4). The following experiment took extracted filter solutions from burned African-sourced fuels and used Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry to discover the compounds associated with each fuel. The compounds found were compared. Many of the compounds identified were present in all of the fuels, other compounds were unique to fuels such as Olive, Mopane, Mosethla, and Acacia.

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