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Published May 1985 | public
Journal Article

An outdoor smog chamber and modeling study of toluene-NOₓ photooxidation

Abstract

An experimental investigation of the gas-phase photooxidation of toluene–NOₓ–air mixtures at part-per-million concentrations has been carried out in a 65-m³, outdoor smog chamber to assess our understanding of the atmospheric chemistry of toluene. In addition, six CO-NOₓ–air irradiations were conducted to characterize the chamber with regard to any wall radical sources. Measured parameters in the toluene–NOₓ experiments included O₃, NO, NO₂, HNO₃, peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN), CO, toluene, benzaldehyde, o-cresol, m-nitrotoluene, peroxybenzoyl nitrate (PBZN), temperature, relative humidity, aerosol size distributions, and particulate organic carbon. Predictions of the reaction mechanism of Leone and Seinfeld [7] are found to be in good agreement with the data under a variety of initial conditions. Additional simulations are used to investigate various mechanistic pathways in areas where our understanding of toluene chemistry is still incomplete.

Additional Information

© 1985 Wiley. Received May 31, 1984. Accepted August 10, 1984. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. ATM-8208625. The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Toby Shafer and Dale Warren in performing the chamber experiments. Helpful discussions with W. P. L. Carter are also acknowledged.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023