Hourly Emission of Submicron Particulate Matter From Residential Coal Combustion and Its Potential Health Impacts in China

Residential coal combustion (RCC) is an important source of aerosols, while the lack of emission inventories for particle number concentrations (PNC) has limited the simulation of their environmental, climatic, and health impacts. Here, the real‐time evolution of PNC and particle surface area concentrations from bituminous, anthracite, and honeycomb coal burning as well as their hourly particle number emission factors (EF PN ) were investigated. A high spatial‐temporal resolution of the emission inventory was developed for China by integrating multi‐source activity data. Exposure risks were quantified using the International Commission on Radiological Protection model. Results indicated that the PN size distributions differed between flaming (peaked from 100 to 20–40 nm) and smoldering combustion phases (<20 nm dominated), indicating diurnal variation. The averaged hourly EF PN (ranging in 4.4 × 10 15 –3.1 × 10 16 ) also held obvious diversities (1.3–4.8 times) for different burning conditions and fuel types. In 2021, the emission amounts of nucleation mode, Aitken mode, and accumulation mode of particles from RCC in China were 3.5 × 10 26 , 1.8 × 10 26 , and 1.6 × 10 25 particles, respectively, with flaming periods dominating both their PN (56.4%) and surface area (73.9%) emission. North China Plain exhibited the highest values for respiratory deposition flux (higher than 6.0 × 10 17 particles min −1 km −2 ). Additionally, the daily average lung‐deposited surface area emissions from RCC were significantly higher (3.4–95.2 times) than those from other sources, including traffic‐related emissions (diesel and gasoline vehicles) and residential combustion sources (e.g., wood combustion, wood‐fired ovens in pizzerias, and household solid waste combustion), indicating elevated exposure risks. This PN emission inventory is expected to provide basic data for constraining the climate and health modeling results of sub‐micro particles.