BIOFUSE

This wiki provides information about BIOFUSE, which is an abbreviation for "The effects of intensive BIO-Fuel production and USE on regional air
quality and global climate (BIOFUSE)". It consists of several campaigns in field and laboratory carried out in Brazil from 2010 to 2012.
Objectives
One of the main goals of the "Sustainable Energy Research Programme (SusEn)" launched by the Academy of Finland in 2007 is to promote basic research on environmental friendly and sustainable energy and energy production. Sustainable energy includes all forms of bioenergy. The objective of this project is to provide quantitative information on the effects of sustainable bio-fuel and energy production and usage in various Brazilian environments. Our aim is to characterize the bio-fuel emissions from Brazilian vehicular fleet utilizing bio-fuels and furthermore, track their fate and role in the production of ozone and secondary organic aerosol loading in the urban atmosphere. In order to quantify the net effects of the increasing bio-fuel usage, we also conduct state-of-the-art measurements in rural areas only scarcely affected by the urban pollution plumes. Thus the proposed project concurs with the main goal of the SusEn research program.
The specific aims are:
• To characterize particulate matter emission profiles of a Brazilian bio-fuel vehicular fleet
• To determine the role of bio-fuel emissions to the air quality in São Paulo
• To monitor aerosol particulate chemical composition and concentration supplementing existing Brazilian air quality measurement network in the greater São Paolo region in order to quantify the fate of bio-fuel emissions and sugar cane burning in a regional scale
• To upscale and integrate the regional experimental results into global scale and perspective including the altered emissions and potential land-use changes related to the bio-fuel production and use
• To enhance the knowledge transfer, networking and co-operative training of young researchers between Finland and Brazil with respect to atmospheric research and air pollution management
The hypotheses are that
i) the effects of bio-fuel use and production are not presently well enough understood so that their net effects and consequences could be estimated by generic models,
ii) the current knowledge is also insufficient to be used to upscale the potential effects from emissions to regional and global air quality,

iii) complementary data at different spatial and temporal scales by different methods is crucial in testing and improving process-based models.
Participants
* University of Sao Paulo - USP - Sao Paulo, Brazil
Institute of Physics - IF USP
Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences - IAG USP
Institute of Chemistry - IQ USP
* CETESB - Sao Paulo, Brazil
* Finnish Meteorological Institute - FMI - Helsinki, Finland
* University of Helsinki - UH - Helsinki, Finland
Department of Physics - Physicum
Funding
Academy of Finland - Finland
Research Instruments
Period/Experiments
* Laboratory
20/5 - 31/5/2010
* Field
Pinheiros Station, Sao Paulo - SP: 04/6 - 30/6/2010
Piracicaba, SP

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