Black carbon (BC), a ubiquitous, persistent, and sorptive carbonaceous component in the environment, is typically measured by bulk analyses.  However, conventional BC methods often give widely varying results and provide little information on the distribution of BC at the particle scale.  Hence, we explored the feasibility of quantifying BC using analytical electron microscopy (AEM) using a suite of standard BC and non-BC samples with and without the presence of sediment particles.  Point analysis by energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) showed that all BC samples have a characteristic O/C atomic ratio of =0.1 at the sub-micrometer scale.  Areal analysis of the elemental images obtained by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) yielded measurements of BC comparable with the conventional quantification methods.  This study demonstrated the potential of using AEM to measure the abundance of nanomaterials in environmental matrices.

Measuring black carbon in geosorbents by elemental mapping

244th National Meeting (2012)

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