Liquid-liquid phase separation in aerosol particles: Dependence on O:C, organic functionalities, and compositional complexity
- Creators
- Song, M.
- Marcolli, C.
- Krieger, U. K.
- Zuend, A.
- Peter, T.
Abstract
Atmospheric aerosol particles may undergo liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) when exposed to varying relative humidity. In this study we investigated the occurrence of LLPS for mixtures consisting of up to ten organic compounds, ammonium sulfate, and water in relationship with the organic oxygen-to-carbon (O:C) ratio. LLPS always occurred for O:C < 0.56, never occurred for O:C > 0.80, and depended on the specific types and compositions of organic functional groups in the regime 0.56 < O:C < 0.80. In the intermediate regime, mixtures with a high share of aromatic compounds shifted the limit of occurrence of LLPS to lower O:C ratios. The number of mixture components and the spread of the O:C range did not notably influence the conditions for LLPS to occur. Since in ambient aerosols O:C range typically between 0.2 and 1.0, LLPS is expected to be a common feature of tropospheric aerosols.
Additional Information
© 2012 American Geophysical Union. Received 19 June 2012; revised 29 August 2012; accepted 4 September 2012; published 5 October 2012. This work was supported by the Swiss National Foundation, project 200020-125151 and by the CCES project IMBALANCE funded by the ETH Domain. The Editor thanks an anonymous reviewer for assisting in the evaluation of this paper.Attached Files
Published - 2012GL052807.pdf
Supplemental Material - 2012gl052807-txts01.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 35393
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20121109-140101212
- 200020-125151
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
- CCES project IMBALANCE
- ETH Zurich
- Created
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2012-11-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field