Seminar

What are these ELVOCs anyway?

DSRC entrance

Neil Donahue, Carnegie Mellon University

Wednesday, May 6, 2015, 3:30 pm Mountain Time
DSRC 2A305

Abstract

Recent research has shown that certain peroxy radicals can “auto oxidize” to form highly oxygenated products, presumably containing multiple peroxide functional groups. The resulting molecules probably have an extremely low volatility, and thus are known as ELVOC. When alpha-pinene is oxidized by ozone, the molar yields of the ELVOCs have molar yields of roughly 5% and thus mass yields of roughly 10%. We shall describe recent experimental results from the CLOUD chamber at CERN that confirm the presence of ELVOC production and reveal its importance to the formation and growth of new particles. We shall also present model calculations of ELVOC condensation dynamics, focusing both on the growth rate of freshly nucleated particles but also on the mass yields predicted for "traditional" secondary organic aerosol (SOA) chamber experiments, where high ELVOC yields at first blush seem to contradict observations of very low SOA mass yields at low SOA mass concentrations.

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