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Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Light-driven Enzymatic Decarboxylation
Published on: May 22, 2016
Rethinking organic aerosols: semivolatile emissions and photochemical aging
Allen L Robinson1, Neil M Donahue, Manish K Shrivastava
1Center for Atmospheric Particle Studies, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. alr@andrew.cmu.edu
Abstract:
Most primary organic-particulate emissions are semivolatile; thus, they partially evaporate with atmospheric dilution, creating substantial amounts of low-volatility gas-phase material. Laboratory experiments show that photo-oxidation of diesel emissions rapidly generates organic aerosol, greatly exceeding the contribution from known secondary organic-aerosol precursors. We attribute this unexplained secondary organic-aerosol production to the oxidation of low-volatility gas-phase species. Accounting for partitioning and photochemical processing of primary emissions creates a more regionally distributed aerosol and brings model predictions into better agreement with observations. Controlling organic particulate-matter concentrations will require substantial changes in the approaches that are currently used to measure and regulate emissions.
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