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Extraction and Characterization of Surfactants from Atmospheric Aerosols
Published on: April 21, 2017
Water Solubility Distribution of Organic Matter Accounts for the Discrepancy in Hygroscopicity among Sub- and
Wen-Chien Lee1,2,3,4,5,6, Yange Deng6, Ruichen Zhou7
1Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing100871, China.
Abstract:
Water uptake properties of organic matter (OM) are critical for aerosol direct and indirect effects. OM contains various chemical species that have a wide range of water solubility. However, the role of water solubility on water uptake by OM has poorly been investigated. We experimentally retrieved water solubility distributions of water-soluble OM (WSOM) from combustion of mosquito coil and tropical peat using the 1-octanol-water partitioning method. In addition, hygroscopic growth and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity of solubility-segregated WSOM were measured. The dominant fraction of WSOM from mosquito coil smoldering was highly soluble (water solubility (S) > 10-2 g cm-3), while that from peat combustion contained ∼40% of less-soluble species (S < 10-3 g cm-3). The difference in water solubility distributions induced changes in the roles of less water-soluble fractions (S < 10-3 g cm-3) on CCN activity. Namely, the less water-soluble fraction from mosquito coil combustion fully dissolved at the point of critical supersaturation, while that for tropical peat smoldering was limited by water solubility. The present result suggests that water solubility distributions of OM, rather than its bulk chemical property, need to be quantified for understanding the water uptake process.
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