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Understanding the Roles of Phase State and Phase Separation in the Growth of Secondary Organic Aerosols


EMSL Project ID
51418

Abstract

We propose to investigate the fundamental roles of phase state and phase separation in the growth of secondary organic aerosols (SOA) formed from oxidation of selected volatile organic compounds (in an environmental chamber) by observing the evolution of particle size distributions and size-dependent phase/viscosity, morphology, volatility, and molecular composition with EMSL's single particle mass spectrometer (SPLAT II), microscopy, high resolution orbitrap mass spectrometry, and ultra-high resolution Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry. We will use the resulting data sets to develop a fundamental molecular-level understanding of SOA formation processes, aerosol growth kinetics, and a compact physicochemical parameterization for use in climate models. At the end of this project, we expect to have improved the representation of particle growth in atmospheric models by studying the fundamental relationship between SOA chemical composition, phase/viscosity, and particle growth kinetics and mechanisms. Aerosol growth kinetics fundamentally determines aerosol number-size distributions and therefore is critical to predicting many climate-relevant aerosol properties.

Project Details

Project type
Large-Scale EMSL Research
Start Date
2020-10-01
End Date
2022-09-30
Status
Closed

Team

Principal Investigator

Rahul Zaveri
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Co-Investigator(s)

John Shilling
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory