2022 Annual Meeting
The Kinetic of Monoterpene with Ozone Creating Aerosol Reaction
Atmospheric aerosols are microscopic solid or liquid particles suspended in the air. Secondary Organic Aerosol (produced in the atmosphere from precursor gasses) impacts the earth as a source of global climate change by the scattering and absorption of solar radiation and indirectly through their role as cloud-condensation nuclei (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es9006004). Monoterpenes are a class of compounds extracted from anthropogenic or biogenic origin. By oxidizing with Ozone, they account for approximately half of the total fine organic aerosol (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1717513115). A set of 11 monoterpenes have been chosen for this study. The compounds are separately injected into Bucknellâs 1 cubic meter Teflon smog chamber and oxidized by Ozone in excess. SOAs formed by gas-phase reactions inside the chamber are measured with a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer (SMPS), which is composed of a Differential Mobility Analyzer (DMA) and Condensation Particle Counter (CPC) to get data on the size distribution of the generated SOA. Although all monoterpenes have the same molecular formula (C10H16), different monoterpenes react differently with Ozone. Utilizing Matlab, a heat plot program has been developed to visualize the data collected from the SMPS with the goal of understanding the differences in various SOAsâ sizes and concentrations produced from different monoterpenes. This study focuses on exploring the kinetic elements of the reaction between Ozone and the different monoterpenes in order to learn more about how the rate of reaction/formation of SOA relates to ultimate size distributions. The work has relevance to ongoing studies related to how the SOA interacts with water vapor in the atmosphere with implications for cloud formation and global climate change modeling.