10th International Aerosol Conference
September 2 - September 7, 2018
America's Center Convention Complex
St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Abstract View


Accelerated Chemistry in Microdroplets: Reaction of Aldehyde Functionalities in α-Pinene Secondary Organic Aerosol with a Derivatizing Agent

YAO ZHANG, Murray Johnston, University of Delaware

     Abstract Number: 821
     Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry

Abstract
Recent studies have shown that reaction rates in microdroplets can be accelerated by several orders of magnitude over similar processes in bulk solutions (Banerjee et al., Analyst 2017, 142, 1399). In the work presented here, α-Pinene Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA) is analyzed online using droplet assisted ionization (DAI). When the droplets contain both SOA and the Girard T (GT) reagent, fast reaction of aldehyde functionalities in the SOA with the GT reagent give products that are detected with high sensitivity. The reaction proceeds on the order of seconds in droplets, but hardly at all after an hour in bulk solution. The experimental setup to perform accelerated reaction chemistry will be described in detail, along with a discussion of reaction products and potential applications to online molecular characterization of SOA.