Direct Measuring Particulate Matters in Smoke Plumes from Chimneys in a Textile Dyeing Industrial Park by a Self-Developed PM Detector on an UAV in Yangtze River Delta of China

Directly measuring particulate matters (PM) from chimneys in an industrial park is difficult due to it being hard to reach the peak heights. A self-developed PM detector on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had been deployed to directly measure the PM emissions in smoke plumes from chimneys in a textile dyeing industrial park. Compared with a commercial PM device (LD-5R, SIBATA, Kyoto, Japan), the self-developed detector showed similar performance with a good correlation (R(2) varying from 0.911 to 0.951) in simultaneously vertical PM measurements on UAV. The PM emissions from chimneys after different textile treating processes, including pigment printing, dyeing process, and digital printing, were investigated. PM mass concentrations and particle number concentrations (PNC) in different sizes were found to be significantly higher in pigment printing than those in dyeing process and digital printing by 2 or 3 times after electrostatic precipitation. The activated carbon adsorption and electrostatic precipitation were the major PM controlling techniques in the park. The PM mass concentrations and PNC were the highest in the process of dyeing after activated carbon adsorption with the concentrations of PM(1) (1000 μg·m(−3)), PM(2.5) (1600 μg·m(−3)), and PM(10) (2000 μg·m(−3)), respectively. According to the results of PM and PNC, PM(2.5) was found to be the dominant particles accounting for 99% of the PM emissions. It may be due to the high temperature in thermo-fixing machine, which is beneficial to the PM(2.5) generation. This study revealed PM(2.5) was the dominant particles to be reduced in textile dyeing enterprises to mitigate PM pollution.