The role of temperature for atmospheric oxidation and subsequent formation of Secondary Organic Aerosol (SOA)

The aim is to understand the role of temperature for atmospheric radical chemistry and partitioning of subsequent products under specified chemical regimes.Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) represents a significant portion of the tropospheric aerosol and is crucial for any assessment on air quality or climate change.

Still, there is no adequate mechanistic understanding of SOA formation on a molecular level, and insights have enlightened the need to use a new concept, i.e. chemical regimes, to enhance relevance to ambient atmospheric chemistry. Here the temperature dependence is a key factor for progress in our understanding.

We will utilise our recently develop methods to isolate the chemical regimes in the oxidation of selected VOCs for a range of different temperatures (down to – 30 ℃).

Our new low-temperature flow reactor combined with mass spectrometry will provide the needed capacity to manage these highly advanced experiments. The project will be done within our multi-chamber collaborative frame-work with international partners.

The coordinated experimental and modelling efforts will help us take full benefit of the wealth of complex information in understanding radical chemistry and gas-to-particle transformation forming SOA.The project will provide knowledge from a molecular perspective to promote needed air quality and climate model revisions of relevant atmospheric processes, such as atmospheric chemistry of vapour mixtures and the gas-to-particle transformation