Smog

Figure 10.1 Products of combustion contribute in vanous ways to the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and smog. (From Smith and Petela, Chem. Eng., 523 32, 1992 reproduced by permission of the Institution of Chemical Engineers.)...

Because of the mixture of VOCs in the atmosphere, the composition of smog reaction products and intermediates is extremely complex. formed via reaction 16, is important because when dissolved in cloud droplets it is an important oxidant, responsible for oxidising SO2 to sulfuric acid [7664-93-9] H2SO4, the primary cause of acid precipitation. The oxidation of many VOCs produces acetyl radicals, CH CO, which can react with O2 to produce peroxyacetyl radicals, CH2(C0)02, which react with NO2... 

Particles are the major cause of the ha2e and the brown color that is often associated with smog. The three most important types of particles produced in smog are composed of organics, sulfates, and nitrates. Organic particles are formed when large VOC molecules, especially aromatics and cycHc alkenes, react with each other and form condensable products. Sulfate particles are formed by a series of reactions initiated by the attack of OH on SO2 in the gas phase or by Hquid-phase reactions. Nitrate particles are formed by... 

Benefits depend upon location. There is reason to beheve that the ratio of hydrocarbon emissions to NO has an influence on the degree of benefit from methanol substitution in reducing the formation of photochemical smog (69). Additionally, continued testing on methanol vehicles, particularly on vehicles which have accumulated a considerable number of miles, may show that some of the assumptions made in the Carnegie Mellon assessment are not vahd. Air quaUty benefits of methanol also depend on good catalyst performance, especially in controlling formaldehyde, over the entire useful life of the vehicle. 

Reduction of metal oxides with hydrogen is of interest in the metals refining industry (94,95) (see Metallurgy). Hydrogen is also used to reduce sulfites to sulfides in one step in the removal of SO2 pollutants (see Airpollution) (96). Hydrogen reacts directiy with SO2 under catalytic conditions to produce elemental sulfur and H2S (97—98). Under certain conditions, hydrogen reacts with nitric oxide, an atmospheric poUutant and contributor to photochemical smog, to produce N2 ... 

Three different types of chemical mechanisms have evolved as attempts to simplify organic atmospheric chemistry surrogate (58,59), lumped (60—63), and carbon bond (64—66). These mechanisms were developed primarily to study the formation of and NO2 in photochemical smog, but can be extended to compute the concentrations of other pollutants, such as those leading to acid deposition (40,42). 

The generalized transport equation, equation 17, can be dissected into terms describing bulk flow (term 2), turbulent diffusion (term 3) and other processes, eg, sources or chemical reactions (term 4), each having an impact on the time evolution of the transported property. In many systems, such as urban smog, the processes have very different time scales and can be viewed as being relatively independent over a short time period, allowing the equation to be "spht" into separate operators. This greatly shortens solution times (74). The solution sequence is... 

M. C. Dodge, Combined Use of Modeling Techniques and Smog Chamber Data to Derive O ne-Precursor Relationships,Repott No. EPA-600/3-77-001a, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, N.C., 1977. 

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