New Particle Formation from the Road Surface

HINRICH GROTHE, Ayse Nur Koyun, Juergen Gratzl, Camile Bocaniciu, Hemanjali Vemuri, TU Wien, Institute of Materials Chemistry, Vienna, Austria

     Abstract Number: 305
     Working Group: Urban Aerosols

Abstract
Atmospheric aerosols are key part of the urban environmental system, as they influence global and regional climate and impact air quality. Supersaturated vapors in urban atmosphere can form new liquid or solid particles under specific, suitable conditions. This process is known as new particle formation (NPF) or secondary gas-to-particle formation. Recent publications have shown that the road itself can be source of NPF both during routine use (Khare et al. 2020) and during maintenance (Weiss et al. 2018). In specific laboratory experiments we have determined the strength of the source and have collected respective aerosols at a construction site with the aim to differentiate NPF from soot and other primary particles originating from bypassing traffic and the road paving machines.

References
[1] Khare et al., "Asphalt-related emissions are a major missing nontraditional source of secondary organic aerosol precursors"; Sci. Adv., 6 (2020), eabb9785.
[2] Weiss et al., "Reducing paving emissions and workers' exposure using novel mastic asphalt mixtures"; Building and Environment, 137 (2018), 51 - 57.