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Updated: May 23, 2026

Production and Measurement of Organic Particulate Matter in the Harvard Environmental Chamber
Published on: November 18, 2018
Heterogeneous glyoxal oxidation: a potential source of secondary organic aerosol
B M Connelly1, D O De Haan, M A Tolbert
1Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences and Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, United States. connellb@colorado.edu
Abstract:
Laboratory studies are described that suggest reactive uptake of glyoxal on particulate containing HNO(3) could contribute to the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the upper troposphere (UT). Using a Knudsen cell flow reactor, glyoxal is observed to react on supercooled H(2)O/HNO(3) surfaces to form condensed-phase glyoxylic acid. This product was verified by derivatization and GC-MS analysis. The reactive uptake coefficient, γ, of glyoxal varies only slightly with the pressure of nitric acid, from γ = 0.5 to 3.0 × 10(-3) for nitric acid pressures between 10(-8) and 10(-6) Torr. The data do not show any dependence on temperature (181-201 K) or pressure of glyoxal (10(-7) to 10(-5) Torr). Using the determined reactive uptake kinetics in a simple model shows that glyoxal uptake to supercooled H(2)O/HNO(3) may account for 4-53% of the total organic mass fraction of aerosol in the UT.
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