AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
The Role of Outdoor Atmospheric Pollutants on Secondary Organic Aerosol in Indoor Environments
MICHAEL WALKER, Claire Fortenberry, Arun Loka, Audrey Dang, Gauri Date, Karolina Cysneiros de Carvalho, Glenn Morrison, Brent Williams, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract Number: 555 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Characterizing the chemical composition and evolution of organic aerosol (OA) in indoor environments has remained challenging despite significant advances in measurement techniques. Human activity continuously alters indoor air composition, providing sources of temporal and chemical complexity that makes general characterization difficult. For example, natural ventilation (e.g. opening windows to regulate temperature) may play a key role in altering indoor OA chemistry by increasing the infiltration of outdoor pollutants.
The Air Composition and Reactivity from Outdoor aNd Indoor Mixing (ACRONIM) campaign was conducted in a single-family home in St. Louis, Missouri during the summer of 2016. To better understand the impacts of natural ventilation, measurements were taken outside and inside the unoccupied home with periods of both closed and opened windows. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were quantified by gas-chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis of sorption tubes, and a thermal desorption aerosol gas chromatograph (TAG) provided hourly, speciated OA measurements.
The use of a recently developed chromatographic binning technique with positive matrix factorization (PMF) allows for the analysis of full sets of TAG chromatograms, providing a more complete understanding of the chemical composition of OA. Factors corresponding to both primary and secondary organic aerosol (POA and SOA, respectively) have been identified across the indoor and outdoor samples. Additionally, a factor corresponding to SOA from monoterpene ozonolysis has been identified based on comparisons to laboratory-generated SOA from a Potential Aerosol Mass (PAM) reactor. The abundance of this class of SOA within the home increased moderately with window opening, which also corresponded to increased levels of ozone in the indoor environment.