AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
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The Role of Day- and Night-time Aging on the Evolution and Composition of Organic Aerosol from Wildfire Emissions
SHANTANU JATHAR, Ali Akherati, Shiva Tarun, Liam Lewane, Abril Galang, Timothy Onasch, Scott Herndon, Joseph Roscioli, Tara Yacovitch, Edward Fortner, Philip Croteau, Conner Daube, Berk Knighton, Benjamin Werden, Ezra Wood, Colorado State University
Abstract Number: 162 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Wildfires are the largest combustion-related source of carbonaceous emissions to the atmosphere; these include direct emissions of black carbon (BC), primary organic aerosol (POA) and semi-volatile, intermediate-volatility, and volatile organic compounds (SVOCs, IVOCs, and VOCs). However, there are large uncertainties surrounding the evolution of these carbonaceous emissions as they are physically and chemically transformed in the atmosphere. To understand these transformations, we performed sixteen experiments using an environmental chamber to simulate day- and night-time chemistry of gas- and aerosol-phase emissions from 7 different fuel types at the Fire Laboratory in Missoula, MT. Across the test matrix, the experiments simulated 2 to 8 hours of equivalent day-time aging (with the hydroxyl radical and ozone) or several hours of night-time aging (with the nitrate radical). Aging resulted in an average organic aerosol (OA) mass enhancement of 28% although the full range of OA mass enhancements varied between -10% and 254%. These enhancement findings were consistent with chamber and flow reactor experiments performed at the Fire Laboratory in 2010 and 2012 but, similar to previous studies, offered no evidence to link the OA mass enhancement to fuel type or oxidant exposure. Experiments simulating night-time aging resulted in an average OA mass enhancement of 10% and subsequent day-time aging resulted in a decrease in OA mass of 8%. While small, for the first time, these experiments highlighted the continuous nature of the OA evolution as the wildfire smoke cycled through night- and day-time processes. Ongoing work is focused on (i) quantifying bulk compositional changes in OA, (ii) comparing the near-field aging simulated in this work with far-field aging simulated during the same campaign (via a mini chamber and flow tube) and (iii) integrating wildfire smoke aging datasets over the past decade to examine the relationship between OA mass enhancement ratios, modified combustion efficiency, initial aerosol concentrations and composition, aerosol size, oxidant exposure, VOC:NOx ratios, and emissions and speciation of SOA precursors.