Simulation of the atmospheric life of ultrafine particles

• Κύριος συγγραφέας: Πατουλιάς, Δαυίδ
• Άλλοι συγγραφείς: Πανδής, Σπύρος
• Μορφή: Thesis
• Γλώσσα: English
• Έκδοση: 2014
• Θέματα: Nanoparticles; Nucleation; Νανοσωματίδια; Πυρηνογένεση; 541.345 15

The Dynamic Model for Aerosol Nucleation (DMAN) is a model which simulates nucleation, gas-phase chemistry, coagulation and condensation/evaporation for a multi-component atmospheric aerosol population. We developed an updated version of DMAN which includes the condensation of organic vapors on nanoparticles, using the recently developed Volatility Basis Set framework, and simulates the gas phase chemistry using the chemical mechanism SAPRC-99. The simulations were performed for two locations with different organic sources; Hyytiala (Finland) and Finokalia (Greece). Initially, we compared the results of the extended DMAN model with the old version which does not include the condensation of organics. The condensation of organics neglecting the Kelvin effects resulting in an approximate doubling of the growth rate of new particles. The number predicted concentration of particles above 3 nm (N3) and 100 (N100) increased at both locations. The increase of surface tension decreased dramatically the growth rate and the diameter that the new particles reached. The predicted concentration of N100 decreased at Hyytiala but increased at Finokalia, while the concentration of N3 decreased in both locations. Condensation of semi-volatile organic vapors, assuming realistic values of the organic surface energy, cannot explain the observed growth rates in Hyytiala during typical nucleation events. The simulations with production and condensation of low-volatility organics and a surface tension of 0.025 N m-1 indicate that the model can reproduce well the field measurements. The addition of chemical aging reactions converting semi-volatile organic aerosol (OA) to low volatility compounds helped the model to better reproduce the observed growth of the fresh particles. At Hyytiala, the organics are the major components during the growth process of new particles. The low-volatility secondary OA helps the growth initially, but after a few hours most of the growth is due to semi-volatile secondary OA components. At Finokalia, the simulation shows that the organic components have a complementary role for the growth contributing 45% of the total mass of new particles.