Volatility secondary organic aerosol

Secondary organic aerosol material is formed in the atmosphere by the mass transfer to the aerosol phase of low vapor pressure products of the oxidation of organic gases. As organic gases are oxidized in the gas phase by species such as the hydroxyl radical (OH), ozone (03), and the nitrate radical (N03), their oxidation products accumulate. Some of these products have low volatilities and condense on the available particles in an effort to establish equilibrium between the gas and aerosol phases. 

The ability of a given volatile organic compound (VOC) to produce during its atmospheric oxidation secondary organic aerosol depends on three factors ... 

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Presto AA, Miracolo MA, Donahue NM, Robinson AL (2010) Secondary organic aerosol formation from high-NO(x) photo-oxidation of low volatility precursors n-alkanes. Environ Sci Technol 44(6) 2029-2034. doi 10.1021/es903712r... 

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This basic picture of organic aerosol was relatively well developed by the end of the 1990s. Chemical transport models were fed by inventories for POA emissions from a wide array of sources, and those emissions were treated in a variety of microphysics modules as effectively non-volatile and often chemically inert particles [19, 20]. SOA models evolved from relatively primitive treatments that simply converted a fixed fraction of VOC emissions into equally non-volatile secondary material (for example 12% of monoterpene emissions) to more sophisticated two-product representations that treated the equilibrium partitioning of surrogate species based on smog-chamber experiments [21-23]. Even today some global-scale models represent SOA as a fixed non-volatile fraction of VOC emissions [24, 25]. 

Condensed-phase SOA formation water-soluble VOCs may dissolve into the aqueous phase of cloud droplets or wet aerosols. Subsequent aqueous-phase reactions (e.g., oxidation and/or oligomerization) can lead to the formation of low-volatility secondary organic material [82-87]. In particular, the dicarbonyl VOCs glyoxal and methylglyoxal have been studied as potential precursors for this SOA formation pathway. Recently, aqueous-phase reactions of isoprene-derived epoxydiols have also been shown to be efficient pathways to SOA formation in the aerosol aqueous phase [88-91]. 

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