AAAR 31st Annual Conference
October 8-12, 2012
Hyatt Regency Minneapolis
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Abstract View
Modeling of Secondary Organic Aerosol from Aromatic Compounds in the Presence of SO2
YUNSEOK IM, Myoseon Jang, University of Florida
Abstract Number: 592 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Atmospheric aerosols play an important role in environmental processes and significant fraction of atmospheric aerosols is a secondary organic aerosol (SOA) which is formed by gas and particle phase photochemical processes in the atmosphere. Even though SOA has been interested and studied by many research groups because of its significant impact on climate change and human health, many parts of chemical and physical processes related with SOA formation are unknown. Even though, some SOA formation models have been developed, their predictions have underestimated the field observations. In this research, a predictive model for the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation, including heterogeneous reaction and partitioning [Partitioning Heterogeneous Reaction Consortium Secondary Organic Aerosol Model (PHRCSOA)], has been developed to narrow the gap between the model predicted and field observed SOA mass. The PHRCSOA model was tested for the SOA produced from the photochemical reaction of toluene in presence of different concentrations of NOx and SO2 using the UF Atmospheric Photochemical Outdoor Reactor (UF-APHOR) dual chambers. To study effects of sulfuric acids on toluene SOA formation, SO2 was photochemically oxidized with toluene and applied to the PHRCSOA model of this study. The outdoor chamber study showed that SO2 increases the toluene SOA formation. For example, for the SOA from the toluene experiment (”Tol = 54ppb, NOx =18 ppb, SO2 = 28 ppb), the toluene SOA yield with SO2 increases by 137 % compared to the one without SO2.