AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Incremental Secondary Organic Aerosol Formation at Simulated Atmospheric Reactivites
MARY KACARAB, William P. L. Carter, David R. Cocker III, University of California, Riverside
Abstract Number: 263 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract A surrogate mixture of anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was developed to study the effects of individual compounds on secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation in simulated urban atmospheres with biogenic influences. Environmental chamber simulations were designed to enable the study of the incremental aerosol formation from select anthropogenic (aromatic) and biogenic (terpene) precursors under chemical conditions created by the surrogate mixtures. The surrogate reactive organic gas (ROG) mixture used was based on that used to conduct experiments to study incremental effects of VOCs on O$_3 formation. Multiple surrogate experiments (with and without the SOA precursor) were performed in the University of California Riverside (UCR) College of Engineering Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) dual 90m$^3 environmental chambers. SOA incremental aerosol yields and aerosol properties such as density, volatility, and elemental chemical composition (from elemental analysis of high resolution time of flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) data will be presented. Incremental yields, SOA characteristics, and O$_3 formation will be compared with data from previous single VOC studies conducted for these aerosol precursors following traditional VOC/NOx chamber experiments. Comparison between the incremental effects of VOCs on SOA formation and properties are important when evaluating how to best extrapolate environmental chamber observations to the ambient atmosphere and provides useful insights into current SOA formation models.