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Molecular-Specific Photolysis of Atmospheric Brown Carbon
DIEGO CALDERON-ARRIETA, Ana Morales, Anusha P.S. Hettiyadura, Chunlin Li, Yinon Rudich, Alexander Laskin, Purdue University
Abstract Number: 230
Working Group: Carbonaceous Aerosol
Abstract
Light-absorbing organic aerosol (aka Brown Carbon, BrC) produced by biomass burning (BB) has a significant impact on global and regional air quality, public health, and climate. In this work we investigate molecular composition of BrC and its atmospheric transformations in laboratory experiments simulating their photolytically-induced transformations. We probe composition and optical properties of individual BrC species using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipped with a photodiode array (PDA) detector for UV-visible analysis of separated chromophores along with high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) for compositional analysis. Results of the HPLC-PDA-HRMS analysis reveal composition-specific atmospheric lifetimes of BrC species, indicating highly complex physicochemical properties of atmospheric BrC. This study provides insight to the atmospheric ageing of BrC in BB emission plumes.