AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Secondary Organic Aerosol Yields of Volatile Chemical Products
SOPHIA CHARAN, Reina Buenconsejo, Yuanlong Huang, John Seinfeld, California Institute of Technology
Abstract Number: 65 Working Group: Aerosol Chemistry
Abstract Recent inventory-based analysis suggests that emissions of volatile chemical products in urban areas have become competitive with those from the transportation sector, now that emissions from motor vehicles have declined due to successful legislation. Understanding the potential for aerosol formation from these volatile chemical products is, therefore, of critical importance for predicting secondary organic aerosol and for formulating policy that will reduce aerosol exposure. A plethora of oxygenated compounds are either emitted directly into the atmosphere or emitted indoors and later escape into the outdoors. The secondary organic aerosol yields of representative compounds that have been measured in the atmosphere or are predicted to contribute significantly to the atmosphere based on inventory data are studied under conditions relevant to urban conditions: benzyl alcohol, n-butyl acetate, ethylene glycol butyl ether, and D5-siloxane. At low constant NO concentrations and 290 K, secondary organic aerosol mass yields for benzyl alcohol exceed 1.5, a yield considerably larger than previously predicted. Even at higher temperatures and different NOx concentrations, mass yields exceed 1. Experimental and simulated environmental chamber data provide an understanding of yield under many relevant urban conditions and give insight into the effect of volatile chemical products on secondary organic aerosol.