Mineral dust is an important chemical component of aerosol, which has a significant impact on the climate and environmental changes. The spectral behavior of aerosol refractive indices at four wavelengths from 440 to 1 020 nm was analyzed based on one year observation obtained from Beijing AERONET site. The real parts of refractive index (n) in each band did not differ greatly, however the imaginary parts (k) showed a significant difference due to the absorption of mineral dust in aerosol. From 440 to 670 nm k decreased rapidly, while from 670 to 1 020 nm featured a lower, constant value. Accordingly, k(440 nm) could be considered separately with other three bands. Hence, we added mineral dust into the currently used three-component aerosol chemical model to form a new four-component model (i.e. BC, AS, dust and water) which is more suitable to represent the aerosol chemical composition. Then we presented a method to retrieve dust content in aerosols using this four-component model and refractive indices obtained from the sunphotometer measurements. Finally the dust content in aerosol was investigated under different weather conditions, i.e. clear, haze and dust in Beijing. The results showed that volume fractions of the dust component were 88%, 37% and 48% for clear, hazy and dusty day respectively, which was consistent with the coarse mode proportion in aerosols calculated from aerosol size distributions.