Secondary organic aerosol formation from a large number of reactive man-made organic compounds

A photochemical trajectory model has been used to examine the relative propensities of a wide variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by human activities to form secondary organic aerosol (SOA) under one set of highly idealised conditions representing northwest Europe. This study applie...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Science of the total environment 2010-07, Vol.408 (16), p.3374-3381
Main Authors: Derwent, Richard G., Jenkin, Michael E., Utembe, Steven R., Shallcross, Dudley E., Murrells, Tim P., Passant, Neil R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerosols
Applied sciences
Atmospheric pollution
Categories
Chemical mechanisms
Degradation mechanisms
Emission
Emittance
Exact sciences and technology
Inventories
Organic Chemicals - chemistry
Organic compounds
Partitioning
Pollutants physicochemistry study: properties, effects, reactions, transport and distribution
Pollution
SOA modelling
Speciated VOC emissions
Stockpiling
Tropospheric chemistry
VOC oxidation
Volatile organic compounds
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Summary:A photochemical trajectory model has been used to examine the relative propensities of a wide variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by human activities to form secondary organic aerosol (SOA) under one set of highly idealised conditions representing northwest Europe. This study applied a detailed speciated VOC emission inventory and the Master Chemical Mechanism version 3.1 (MCM v3.1) gas phase chemistry, coupled with an optimised representation of gas–aerosol absorptive partitioning of 365 oxygenated chemical reaction product species. In all, SOA formation was estimated from the atmospheric oxidation of 113 emitted VOCs. A number of aromatic compounds, together with some alkanes and terpenes, showed significant propensities to form SOA. When these propensities were folded into a detailed speciated emission inventory, 15 organic compounds together accounted for 97% of the SOA formation potential of UK man made VOC emissions and 30 emission source categories accounted for 87% of this potential. After road transport and the chemical industry, SOA formation was dominated by the solvents sector which accounted for 28% of the SOA formation potential.
ISSN:0048-9697
1879-1026
DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2010.04.013