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New Portable Flow Tube Technique to Investigate the Formation and Aging of Secondary Organic Aerosol

A new portable flow tube technique, the Toronto Photo-Oxidation Tube v2.0 was developed and characterized to explore its potential to control and monitor the OH-initiated formation and chemical aging of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in-situ. The first study investigated the different operational parameters of this flow tube technique. TPOT v2.0 can generate oxidizing conditions equivalent to ambient OH exposures of 2.3 – 10.8 days. The transmission efficiency of a model organic aerosol indicated negligible losses in the oxidation tube. Differences in the residence time distribution curves measured for a gas and model organic aerosol showed that particles were subjected to approximately half of the OH exposure compared to gases. The second study examined the capacity of the TPOT technique to generate secondary aerosols due to OH oxidation. High aerosol yield was observed for H2SO4 particles, whereas a low aerosol yield was observed for α-pinene SOA.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OTU.1807/29647
Date29 August 2011
CreatorsWong, Jenny Pui Shan
ContributorsAbbatt, Jonathan P. D.
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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