scholarly journals Numerical Sensitivity Tests of Volatile Organic Compounds Emission to PM2.5 Formation during Heat Wave Period in 2018 in Two Southeast Korean Cities

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geum-Hee Yang ◽  
Yu-Jin Jo ◽  
Hyo-Jung Lee ◽  
Chang-Keun Song ◽  
Cheol-Hee Kim

A record-breaking severe heat wave was recorded in southeast Korea from 11 July to 15 August 2018, and the numerical sensitivity simulations of volatile organic compound (VOC) to secondarily generated particulate matter with diameter of less than 2.5 µm (PM2.5) concentrations were studied in the Busan and Ulsan metropolitan areas in southeast Korea. A weather research and forecasting (WRF) model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem) was employed, and we carried out VOC emission sensitivity simulations to investigate variations in PM2.5 concentrations during the heat wave period that occurred from 11 July to 15 August 2018. In our study, when anthropogenic VOC emissions from the Comprehensive Regional Emissions Inventory for Atmospheric Transport Experiment-2015 (CREATE-2015) inventory were increased by approximately a factor of five in southeast Korea, a better agreement with observations of PM2.5 mass concentrations was simulated, implying an underestimation of anthropogenic VOC emissions over southeast Korea. The simulated secondary organic aerosol (SOA) fraction, in particular, showed greater dominance during high temperature periods such as 19–21 July, 2018, with the SOA fractions of 42.3% (in Busan) and 34.3% (in Ulsan) among a sub-total of seven inorganic and organic components. This is considerably higher than observed annual mean organic carbon (OC) fraction (28.4 ± 4%) among seven components, indicating the enhancement of secondary organic aerosols induced by photochemical reactions during the heat wave period in both metropolitan areas. The PM2.5 to PM10 ratios were 0.69 and 0.74, on average, during the study period in the two cities. These were also significantly higher than the typical range in those cities, which was 0.5–0.6 in 2018. Our simulations implied that extremely high temperatures with no precipitation are significantly important to the secondary generation of PM2.5 with higher secondary organic aerosol fraction via photochemical reactions in southeastern Korean cities. Other possible relationships between anthropogenic VOC emissions and temperature during the heat wave episode are also discussed in this study.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (9) ◽  
pp. 5425-5436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yonggang Xue ◽  
Yu Huang ◽  
Steven Sai Hang Ho ◽  
Long Chen ◽  
Liqin Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract. The high contribution of secondary organic aerosol to the loading of fine particle pollution in China highlights the roles of volatile organic compound (VOC) oxidation. In this respect, particulate active metallic oxides in dust, like TiO2 and Fe ions, were proposed to influence the photochemical reactions of ambient VOCs. A case study was conducted at an urban site in Xi'an, northwest China, to investigate the origin and transformation of VOCs during a windblown dust-to-haze pollution episode, and the assumption that dust would enhance the oxidation of VOCs was verified. Local vehicle exhaust (25 %) and biomass burning (18 %) were found to be the two largest contributors to ambient VOCs. In the dust pollution period, a sharp decrease in the loading of VOCs and the aging of their components were observed. Simultaneously, the secondary oxygenated VOC fraction (i.e., methylglyoxal) increased. Source strength, physical dispersion, and regional transport were eliminated as major factors for the variation of ambient VOCs. In another aspect, about a 2- to 3-fold increase in the loading of iron (Fe) and titanium (Ti) was found in the airborne particles, together with a fast decrease in trans-/cis-2-butene ratios, which demonstrated that dust can accelerate the oxidation of ambient VOCs and the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) precursors.


Author(s):  
Hind A. A. Al-Abadleh

Extensive research has been done on the processes that lead to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) including atmospheric oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from biogenic and anthropogenic...


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (15) ◽  
pp. 11545-11562
Author(s):  
Louise N. Jensen ◽  
Manjula R. Canagaratna ◽  
Kasper Kristensen ◽  
Lauriane L. J. Quéléver ◽  
Bernadette Rosati ◽  
...  

Abstract. This work investigates the individual and combined effects of temperature and volatile organic compound precursor concentrations on the chemical composition of particles formed in the dark ozonolysis of α-pinene. All experiments were conducted in a 5 m3 Teflon chamber at an initial ozone concentration of 100 ppb and initial α-pinene concentrations of 10 and 50 ppb, respectively; at constant temperatures of 20, 0, or −15 ∘C; and at changing temperatures (ramps) from −15 to 20 and from 20 to −15 ∘C. The chemical composition of the particles was probed using a high-resolution time-of-flight aerosol mass spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS). A four-factor solution of a positive matrix factorization (PMF) analysis of the combined HR-ToF-AMS data is presented. The PMF analysis and the elemental composition analysis of individual experiments show that secondary organic aerosol particles with the highest oxidation level are formed from the lowest initial α-pinene concentration (10 ppb) and at the highest temperature (20 ∘C). A higher initial α-pinene concentration (50 ppb) and/or lower temperature (0 or −15 ∘C) results in a lower oxidation level of the molecules contained in the particles. With respect to the carbon oxidation state, particles formed at 0 ∘C are more comparable to particles formed at −15 ∘C than to those formed at 20 ∘C. A remarkable observation is that changes in temperature during particle formation result in only minor changes in the elemental composition of the particles. Thus, the temperature at which aerosol particle formation is induced seems to be a critical parameter for the particle elemental composition. Comparison of the HR-ToF-AMS-derived estimates of the content of organic acids in the particles based on m/z 44 in the mass spectra show good agreement with results from off-line molecular analysis of particle filter samples collected from the same experiments. Higher temperatures are associated with a decrease in the absolute mass concentrations of organic acids (R-COOH) and organic acid functionalities (-COOH), while the organic acid functionalities account for an increasing fraction of the measured particle mass.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás Zabalegui ◽  
Malena Manzi ◽  
Antoine Depoorter ◽  
Nathalie Hayeck ◽  
Marie Roveretto ◽  
...  

Abstract. A transmission mode-direct analysis in real time-quadrupole time of flight-mass spectrometry (TM-DART-QTOF-MS)-based analytical method coupled to multivariate statistical analysis was developed to interrogate lipophilic compounds in seawater samples without the need of desalinization. An untargeted metabolomics approach addressed here as seaomics was successfully implemented to discriminate sea surface microlayer (SML) from underlying water (ULW) samples (n = 22, 10 paired samples) collected during a field campaign at the Cape Verde islands in September–October 2017. A panel of 11 ionic species detected in all samples allowed sample class discrimination by means of supervised multivariate statistical models. Tentative identification of these species suggest that saturated fatty acids, peptides, fatty alcohols, halogenated compounds, and oxygenated boron-containing organic compounds may be involved in water-air transfer processes and in photochemical reactions at the water-air interface of the ocean. A subset of SML samples (n = 5) were subject to on-site experiments during the campaign using a lab-to-the-field approach to test their secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation potency. Results from these experiments and the analytical seaomics strategy provide a proof of concept that organic compounds play a key role in aerosol formation processes at the water/air interface.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 7429-7443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tian Feng ◽  
Shuyu Zhao ◽  
Naifang Bei ◽  
Jiarui Wu ◽  
Suixin Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract. The implementation of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in China since 2013 has profoundly altered the ambient pollutants in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region. Here we show observations of substantially increased O3 concentrations (about 30 %) and a remarkable increase in the ratio of organic carbon (OC) to elemental carbon (EC) in BTH during the autumn from 2013 to 2015, revealing an enhancement in atmospheric oxidizing capacity (AOC) and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. To explore the impacts of increasing AOC on the SOA formation, a severe air pollution episode from 3 to 8 October 2015 with high O3 and PM2.5 concentrations is simulated using the WRF-Chem model. The model performs reasonably well in simulating the spatial distributions of PM2.5 and O3 concentrations over BTH and the temporal variations in PM2.5, O3, NO2, OC, and EC concentrations in Beijing compared to measurements. Sensitivity studies show that the change in AOC substantially influences the SOA formation in BTH. A sensitivity case characterized by a 31 % O3 decrease (or 36 % OH decrease) reduces the SOA level by about 30 % and the SOA fraction in total organic aerosol by 17 % (from 0.52 to 0.43, dimensionless). Spatially, the SOA decrease caused by reduced AOC is ubiquitous in BTH, but the spatial relationship between SOA concentrations and the AOC is dependent on the SOA precursor distribution. Studies on SOA formation pathways further show that when the AOC is reduced, the SOA from oxidation and partitioning of semivolatile primary organic aerosol (POA) and co-emitted intermediate volatile organic compounds (IVOCs) decreases remarkably, followed by those from anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Meanwhile, the SOA decrease in the irreversible uptake of glyoxal and methylglyoxal on the aerosol surfaces is negligible.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1591-1606 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. D. Cappa ◽  
X. Zhang ◽  
C. L. Loza ◽  
J. S. Craven ◽  
L. D. Yee ◽  
...  

Abstract. Laboratory chamber experiments are the main source of data on the mechanism of oxidation and the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) forming potential of volatile organic compounds. Traditional methods of representing the SOA formation potential of an organic do not fully capture the dynamic, multi-generational nature of the SOA formation process. We apply the Statistical Oxidation Model (SOM) of Cappa and Wilson (2012) to model the formation of SOA from the formation of the four C12 alkanes, dodecane, 2-methyl undecane, cyclododecane and hexylcyclohexane, under both high- and low-NOx conditions, based upon data from the Caltech chambers. In the SOM, the evolution of reaction products is defined by the number of carbon (NC) and oxygen (NO) atoms, and the model parameters are (1) the number of oxygen atoms added per reaction, (2) the decrease in volatility upon addition of an oxygen atom and (3) the probability that a given reaction leads to fragmentation of the molecules. Optimal fitting of the model to chamber data is carried out using the measured SOA mass concentration and the aerosol O:C atomic ratio. The use of the kinetic, multi-generational SOM is shown to provide insights into the SOA formation process and to offer promise for application to the extensive library of existing SOA chamber experiments that is available.


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