scholarly journals A predictive group-contribution model for the viscosity of aqueous organic aerosol

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie R. Gervasi ◽  
David O. Topping ◽  
Andreas Zuend

Abstract. The viscosity of primary and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) has important implications for the processing of aqueous organic aerosol phases in the atmosphere, their involvement in climate forcing, and transboundary pollution. Here we introduce a new thermodynamics-based group-contribution model, which is capable of accurately predicting the dynamic viscosity of a mixture over several orders of magnitude (~ 10−3 to > 1012 Pa s) as a function of temperature and mixture composition, accounting for the effect of relative humidity on aerosol water content. The mixture viscosity modelling framework builds on the thermodynamic activity coefficient model AIOMFAC (Aerosol Inorganic–Organic Mixtures Functional groups Activity Coefficients) for predictions of liquid mixture non-ideality, including liquid–liquid phase separation, and the calorimetric glass transition temperature model by DeRieux et al. (2018) for pure-component viscosity values of organic components. Comparing this new model with simplified modelling approaches reveals that the group-contribution method is the most accurate in predicting mixture viscosity, although accurate pure-component viscosity predictions (and associated experimental data) are key and one of the main sources of uncertainties in current models, including the model presented here. Nonetheless, we find excellent agreement between the viscosity predictions and measurements for systems in which mixture constituents have a molar mass below 350 g mol−1. As such, we demonstrate the validity of the model in quantifying mixture viscosity for aqueous binary mixtures (glycerol, citric acid, sucrose, and trehalose), aqueous multicomponent mixtures (citric acid + sucrose and a mixture of nine dicarboxylic acids), and aqueous SOA surrogate mixtures derived from the oxidation of α-pinene, toluene, or isoprene. We also use the model to assess the expected change in SOA particle viscosity during idealized adiabatic air parcel transport from the surface to higher altitudes within the troposphere. This work demonstrates the capability and flexibility of our model in predicting the viscosity for organic mixtures of varying degrees of complexity and its applicability for modelling SOA viscosity over a wide range of temperatures and relative humidities.

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 2987-3008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie R. Gervasi ◽  
David O. Topping ◽  
Andreas Zuend

Abstract. The viscosity of primary and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) has important implications for the processing of aqueous organic aerosol phases in the atmosphere, their involvement in climate forcing, and transboundary pollution. Here we introduce a new thermodynamics-based group-contribution model, which is capable of accurately predicting the dynamic viscosity of a mixture over several orders of magnitude (∼10-3 to >1012 Pa s) as a function of temperature and mixture composition, accounting for the effect of relative humidity on aerosol water content. The mixture viscosity modelling framework builds on the thermodynamic activity coefficient model AIOMFAC (Aerosol Inorganic–Organic Mixtures Functional groups Activity Coefficients) for predictions of liquid mixture non-ideality, including liquid–liquid phase separation, and the calorimetric glass transition temperature model by DeRieux et al. (2018) for pure-component viscosity values of organic components. Comparing this new model with simplified modelling approaches reveals that the group-contribution method is the most accurate in predicting mixture viscosity, although accurate pure-component viscosity predictions (and associated experimental data) are key and one of the main sources of uncertainties in current models, including the model presented here. Nonetheless, we find excellent agreement between the viscosity predictions and measurements for systems in which mixture constituents have a molar mass below 350 g mol−1. As such, we demonstrate the validity of the model in quantifying mixture viscosity for aqueous binary mixtures (glycerol, citric acid, sucrose, and trehalose), aqueous multicomponent mixtures (citric acid plus sucrose and a mixture of nine dicarboxylic acids), and aqueous SOA surrogate mixtures derived from the oxidation of α-pinene, toluene, or isoprene. We also use the model to assess the expected change in SOA particle viscosity during idealized adiabatic air parcel transport from the surface to higher altitudes within the troposphere. This work demonstrates the capability and flexibility of our model in predicting the viscosity for organic mixtures of varying degrees of complexity and its applicability for modelling SOA viscosity over a wide range of temperatures and relative humidities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (21) ◽  
pp. 13383-13407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Gorkowski ◽  
Thomas C. Preston ◽  
Andreas Zuend

Abstract. Water plays an essential role in aerosol chemistry, gas–particle partitioning, and particle viscosity, but it is typically omitted in thermodynamic models describing the mixing within organic aerosol phases and the partitioning of semivolatile organics. In this study, we introduce the Binary Activity Thermodynamics (BAT) model, a water-sensitive reduced-complexity model treating the nonideal mixing of water and organics. The BAT model can process different levels of physicochemical mixture information enabling its application in the thermodynamic aerosol treatment within chemical transport models, the evaluation of humidity effects in environmental chamber studies, and the analysis of field observations. It is capable of using organic structure information including O:C, H:C, molar mass, and vapor pressure, which can be derived from identified compounds or estimated from bulk aerosol properties. A key feature of the BAT model is predicting the extent of liquid–liquid phase separation occurring within aqueous mixtures containing hydrophobic organics. This is crucial to simulating the abrupt change in water uptake behavior of moderately hygroscopic organics at high relative humidity, which is essential for capturing the correct behavior of organic aerosols serving as cloud condensation nuclei. For gas–particle partitioning predictions, we complement a volatility basis set (VBS) approach with the BAT model to account for nonideality and liquid–liquid equilibrium effects. To improve the computational efficiency of this approach, we trained two neural networks; the first for the prediction of aerosol water content at given relative humidity, and the second for the partitioning of semivolatile components. The integrated VBS + BAT model is benchmarked against high-fidelity molecular-level gas–particle equilibrium calculations based on the AIOMFAC (Aerosol Inorganic-Organic Mixtures Functional groups Activity Coefficient) model. Organic aerosol systems derived from α-pinene or isoprene oxidation are used for comparison. Predicted organic mass concentrations agree within less than a 5 % error in the isoprene case, which is a significant improvement over a traditional VBS implementation. In the case of the α-pinene system, the error is less than 2 % up to a relative humidity of 94 %, with larger errors past that point. The goal of the BAT model is to represent the bulk O:C and molar mass dependencies of a wide range of water–organic mixtures to a reasonable degree of accuracy. In this context, we discuss that the reduced-complexity effort may be poor at representing a specific binary water–organic mixture perfectly. However, the averaging effects of our reduced-complexity model become more representative when the mixture diversity increases in terms of organic functionality and number of components.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3209
Author(s):  
Karla R. Borba ◽  
Didem P. Aykas ◽  
Maria I. Milani ◽  
Luiz A. Colnago ◽  
Marcos D. Ferreira ◽  
...  

Portable spectrometers are promising tools that can be an alternative way, for various purposes, of analyzing food quality, such as monitoring in a few seconds the internal quality during fruit ripening in the field. A portable/handheld (palm-sized) near-infrared (NIR) spectrometer (Neospectra, Si-ware) with spectral range of 1295–2611 nm, equipped with a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMs), was used to develop prediction models to evaluate tomato quality attributes non-destructively. Soluble solid content (SSC), fructose, glucose, titratable acidity (TA), ascorbic, and citric acid contents of different types of fresh tomatoes were analyzed with standard methods, and those values were correlated to spectral data by partial least squares regression (PLSR). Fresh tomato samples were obtained in 2018 and 2019 crops in commercial production, and four fruit types were evaluated: Roma, round, grape, and cherry tomatoes. The large variation in tomato types and having the fruits from distinct years resulted in a wide range in quality parameters enabling robust PLSR models. Results showed accurate prediction and good correlation (Rpred) for SSC = 0.87, glucose = 0.83, fructose = 0.87, ascorbic acid = 0.81, and citric acid = 0.86. Our results support the assertion that a handheld NIR spectrometer has a high potential to simultaneously determine several quality attributes of different types of tomatoes in a practical and fast way.


AIChE Journal ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aage Fredenslund ◽  
Peter Rasmussen

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document