A growing number of studies suggest that controlling emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOC) is necessary to improve PM2.5 and ozone concentrations, in addition to direct sources of PM2.5 and NOx emissions that have been focused on. To manage VOC emissions, it is necessary to first identify main sources of VOC emissions. The most popular method for determining source contributions based on observations is the Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) receptor model. However, the existing PMF method without considering concentration losses due to chemical reactions and atmospheric diffusion in the air is problematic. There have been recent studies applying improved PMF method to address these issues.

Considering both the need to identify the contribution of VOC emission sources and problems of the existing PMF method, we established and applied an improved PMF receptor modeling procedure to identify the contribution of VOC emission sources in Seoul. Based on findings of the analysis, main VOC emission sources and management directions for PM2.5 and ozone peak seasons were suggested.