Population Balances of Micron-Sized Aerosols in a Bipolar Ion Environment
- Creators
- Lòpez-Yglesias, Xerxes
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Flagan, Richard C.
Abstract
The present work re-examines the assumptions that are required for a steady-state charge distribution analysis to be valid. First, the common approximation that there are only 11 charge states available to the distribution is relaxed to allow for 201 charge states to be available to the particle distribution. This is found to have large repercussions on the behavior of the distribution for radii greater than 0.5 μm. The steady-state assumption itself is then re-examined by calculating the time required to reach steady state for many different ion-pair production rates and initial particle charge states as a function of radius. In the steady-state model, the ion populations are often assumed to decouple completely from the aerosol; this is shown to be false throughout the troposphere. Finally, the number of positive and negative charge states needed to accurately model a particle population of a given size is determined.
Additional Information
© 2013 American Association for Aerosol Research. Received 17 January 2012; accepted 21 January 2013. We thank Andrew Downard for his time spent editing and discussing this manuscript. We would also like to thank the NASA Astrobiology Institute through the NAI Titan team managed at JPL under NASA Contract NAS7-03001 for the funding of this project, and the Ayrshire Foundation for their support in making computing resources available.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 38385
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130509-104957055
- NAS7-03001
- NASA
- Ayrshire Foundation
- Created
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2013-05-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field