AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Kinetic Studies of the Heterogeneous Surface Reactions of Indoor Organic Films with Hydroxyl Radical
RAMINA ALWARDA, Shouming Zhou, Jonathan Abbatt, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Abstract Number: 200 Working Group: Indoor Aerosols
Abstract Most previous studies on indoor chemistry have focused on gas-phase and surface reactions that involve oxidation with ozone. However, a recent study reported gas-phase OH radical concentrations in an indoor environment can be as high as 1.8×10$^6 molecules/cm$^3. It is therefore important to characterize the reactions occurring on indoor surfaces with gas-phase OH radicals.
This work focuses on the heterogeneous surface chemistry that occurs when compounds ubiquitously found indoors, such as squalene (a major component of skin oil that accounts for ~10% skin lipids by mass) or di-n-octyl phthalate (DnOP, a plasticizer) adsorb onto indoor surfaces. In this study, squalene or DnOP were loaded onto the surface of glass capillaries and reacted with hydroxyl radicals in a quartz flow tube. Gas-phase hydroxyl radicals were generated by the photolysis of hydrogen peroxide. Samples on the capillaries were analyzed by direct analysis in real time-mass spectrometry (DART-MS). We will present the surface reaction kinetics and product formation from the OH oxidation of squalene and DnOP. In addition, using the same experimental setup, the oxidation of organic films developed in real indoor conditions with the OH radical will be investigated.