CUP Faculty Research

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-23-2003

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that tropospheric sulfate aerosols commonly contain 50% by mass organic species. The influence of these organics on the chemical and physical properties of sulfate aerosols is not fully established. We have measured the water activity of pure dicarboxylic acids and eutonic mixtures of ammonium sulfate/dicarboxylic acids at 25°C and have calculated van't Hoff factors for each individual system. We have also used the vapor pressure data to determine the hygroscopic growth curves for pure dicarboxylic acids and eutonic mixtures and provide power law fits to the data. For the systems studied we find that the presence of soluble dicarboxylic acids at the eutonic proportion depresses hygroscopic growth when compared to pure ammonium sulfate. In addition, we find that the presence of low-solubility dicarboxylic acids at the eutonic proportion has no effect on the hygroscopic growth when compared to pure ammonium sulfate. To model the hygroscopic growth curves of the eutonic solutions, we employed the Zdanovskii, Stokes, and Robinson method. It was found that this approximation was accurate to within 17% for all the systems studied.

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Publication Information.

Wise, M. E., J. D. Surratt, D. B. Curtis, J. E. Shilling, and M. A. Tolbert, Hygroscopic growth of ammonium sulfate/dicarboxylic acids, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D20), 4638, doi:10.1029/2003JD003775, 2003.

doi:10.1029/2003JD003775

Published In

Journal of Geophysical Research

Source

CU Commons -- Math and Science Department Faculty Research

Included in

Chemistry Commons

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