Functionalization and fragmentation during ambient organic aerosol aging: application of the 2-d volatility basis set to field studies
Murphy, B. N. Donahue, N. M. Fountoukis, C. Dall'Osto, M. O'Dowd, C. Kiendler-Scharr, A. Pandis, S. N.
Murphy, B. N.
Donahue, N. M.
Fountoukis, C.
Dall'Osto, M.
O'Dowd, C.
Kiendler-Scharr, A.
Pandis, S. N.
Publication Date
2012-11-16
Type
Article
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Murphy, B. N. Donahue, N. M.; Fountoukis, C.; Dall'Osto, M.; O'Dowd, C.; Kiendler-Scharr, A.; Pandis, S. N. (2012). Functionalization and fragmentation during ambient organic aerosol aging: application of the 2-d volatility basis set to field studies. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 12 (22), 10797-10816
Abstract
Multigenerational oxidation chemistry of atmospheric organic compounds and its effects on aerosol loadings and chemical composition is investigated by implementing the Two-Dimensional Volatility Basis Set (2-D-VBS) in a Lagrangian host chemical transport model. Three model formulations were chosen to explore the complex interactions between functionalization and fragmentation processes during gas-phase oxidation of organic compounds by the hydroxyl radical. The base case model employs a conservative transformation by assuming a reduction of one order of magnitude in effective saturation concentration and an increase of oxygen content by one or two oxygen atoms per oxidation generation. A second scheme simulates functionalization in more detail using group contribution theory to estimate the effects of oxygen addition to the carbon backbone on the compound volatility. Finally, a fragmentation scheme is added to the detailed functionalization scheme to create a functionalization-fragmentation parameterization. Two condensed-phase chemistry pathways are also implemented as additional sensitivity tests to simulate (1) heterogeneous oxidation via OH uptake to the particle-phase and (2) aqueous-phase chemistry of glyoxal and methylglyoxal. The model is applied to summer and winter periods at three sites where observations of organic aerosol (OA) mass and O:C were obtained during the European Integrated Project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions (EUCAARI) campaigns. The base case model reproduces observed mass concentrations and O:C well, with fractional errors (FE) lower than 55% and 25 %, respectively. The detailed functionalization scheme tends to overpredict OA concentrations, especially in the summertime, and also underpredicts O:C by approximately a factor of 2. The detailed functionalization model with fragmentation agrees well with the observations for OA concentration, but still underpredicts O:C. Both heterogeneous oxidation and aqueous-phase processing have small effects on OA levels but heterogeneous oxidation, as implemented here, does enhance O:C by about 0.1. The different schemes result in very different fractional attribution for OA between anthropogenic and biogenic sources.
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Copernicus GmbH
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland