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Abstract: THOSCANE (Tool for HOurly Specification of CORINAIR ANnual Emissions) a software tool aimed at elaborating the emission inventories produced on the basis of the CORINAIR methodology for the needs of air quality modelling community, is presented here. Air quality modellers usually need very detailed information about emissions in the area studied. Also when a box model is applied, not considering spatial features of the emissions, other details have to be inferred from the inventory in order to correctly feed the model: the hourly time profile is usually required for all pollutants, whereas details on particulate matter size spectrum and chemical composition are necessary when dealing with PM modelling and suitable speciation profiles of emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a stringent requirement for modelling complex photochemical processes in the atmosphere. THOSCANE handles the emission inventory and all these profiles to obtain detailed emission patterns suitable for complex atmospheric box models. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The pernicious effects of deposition of airborne particles on monumental stones have been widely demonstrated, but estimates of deposition fluxes on historic buildings remain a hard task because of the lack of careful experiments and modelling. AERBOX is a new box model developed by ENVIROWARE and ENEA, simulating the whole life cycle of aerosols. AERBOX takes into account all the relevant chemical and physical processes involved: emission, chemical reactions in gas and in gas–liquid phases, deposition, entrainment, condensation and nucleation. Concentration and deposition rates of 52 species of gaseous pollutants and 14 species of particulate pollutants are calculated on hourly basis.A modelling system composed by AERBOX and the emission pre-processor Tool for Hourly Speciation of CORINAIR Annual Emissions (THOSCANE) has been applied to estimate the flux of particulate matter deposited on the monumental area of Florence downtown starting from a CORINAIR emission inventory developed by the Tuscany Region including the industrial and mobile sources in the area of Florence and Prato counties. The time and chemical profiles of the emissions have been adapted to the Tuscany region from the reference profiles given by both the California Air Resource Board and EPA and meteorological inputs were given by the Tuscany Meteorological Centre. Concentrations and deposition fluxes were compared with field measurements available in the open literature. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: An experiment aimed at comparing particulate matter (PM) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations produced in a road tunnel by buses is described. The experiment took place in 2001 in Bologna when a couple of buses belonging to the public transport fleet where driven backwards and forwards in a road tunnel closed to all other vehicles. Buses run in the tunnel for 8h a day for 4 experiment days, each day using a different fuel: biodiesel, diesel–water emulsion, diesel–water emulsion with low sulphur content and commercial diesel. Average daily concentrations of PM of different sizes and of 12 PHAs were measured and comparison between different fuels was attempted in order to assess “real-world” exhaust emissions of different fuels. Due to heterogeneity of experimental conditions in different days and the relatively large measurement uncertainties, the effort was only partially successful, and it was not possible to state any firm conclusion on fuels reliability even if some indications in agreement with literature were found. Nevertheless, the experiment and the data analysis method developed could be of interest as a methodological approach for future experiments aimed at evaluating “real-world” exhaust emissions of single vehicles. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]