AAAR 35th Annual Conference October 17 - October 21, 2016 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Condensational Growth Kinetics of Spheres and N-mers
Amruthesh Thirumalaiswamy, WILLIAM HEINSON, Rajan Chakrabarty, Washington University in St. Louis
Abstract Number: 677 Working Group: Single Aerosol Particle Studies - Fundamentals
Abstract Condensation is one of the key processes involved in the growth of aerosols. This study focuses on computationally probing the kinetics of diffusion-limited condensation of vapor molecules onto seed aerosol nuclei of two morphologies: sphere and cluster of aggregated spheres. A simulation setup consisting of vapor and gas molecules undergoing Brownian diffusive motion around an aerosol is used to obtain the condensation rates. The simulation parameters were set such as to best represent real-world condensational growth scenarios. Relevant parameters necessary to comprehensively define the deposition kinetics are investigated. Major findings include the differences in temporal evolution of the condensation rates and concentration profiles for n-mers and their equivalent-size coalescing spheres, and 3-dimensional mapping of condensation “hotspots” on particle surfaces. Our results highlight the need to better parameterize and incorporate the temporal evolution of condensational rate coefficients in existing aerosol growth models.