Aerosol Growth in a Steady-State, Continuous Flow Chamber: Application to Studies of Secondary Aerosol Formation

Abstract

An analytical solution for the steady-state aerosol size distribution achieved in a steady-state, continuous flow chamber is derived, where particle growth is occurring by gas-to-particle conversion and particle loss is occurring by deposition to the walls of the chamber. The solution is presented in the case of two condensing species. By fitting the predicted steady-state aerosol size distribution to that measured, one may infer information about the nature of the condensing species from the calculated values of the species's molecular weights. The analytical solution is applied to three sets of experiments on secondary organic aerosol formation carried out in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency irradiated continuous flow reactor, with parent hydrocarbons: toluene, f -pinene, and a mixture of toluene and f -pinene. Fits to the observed size distributions are illustrated by assuming two condensing products for each parent hydrocarbon; this is a highly simplified picture of secondary organic aerosol formation, which is known to involve considerably more than two condensing products. While not based on a molecular-level model of the gas-to-particle conversion process, the model does allow one to evaluate the extent to which the observed size distribution agrees with that based on a simple, two-component picture of condensation, and to study the sensitivity of those size distributions to variation of the essential properties of the condensing compounds, such as molecular weight. An inherent limitation of the steady-state experiment is that it is not possible to calculate the vapor pressures of the condensing species.

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