Rethinking Organic Aerosols: Semivolatile Emissions and Photochemical Aging
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- 2 March 2007
- journal article
- other
- Published by American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Science
- Vol. 315 (5816) , 1259-1262
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1133061
Abstract
Most primary organic-particulate emissions are semivolatile; thus, they partially evaporate with atmospheric dilution, creating substantial amounts of low-volatility gas-phase material. Laboratory experiments show that photo-oxidation of diesel emissions rapidly generates organic aerosol, greatly exceeding the contribution from known secondary organic-aerosol precursors. We attribute this unexplained secondary organic-aerosol production to the oxidation of low-volatility gas-phase species. Accounting for partitioning and photochemical processing of primary emissions creates a more regionally distributed aerosol and brings model predictions into better agreement with observations. Controlling organic particulate-matter concentrations will require substantial changes in the approaches that are currently used to measure and regulate emissions.Keywords
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