Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Experimental observations of non-equilibrium gas-particle partitioning of PAHs in an outdoor smog chamber

Conference ·
OSTI ID:197495
;  [1]
  1. Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (United States). Dept. of Environmental Sciences and Engineering
To study non-equilibrium gas-particle partitioning of various PAHs, three specially designed smog chamber experiments were conducted (October 1993, January 1994, and February 1994). Automobile diesel exhaust was injected for five minutes into a 190 m{sup 3} Teflon film chamber and allowed to age during the night at temperatures below 15 C. A large denuder system was utilized during the injection period in order to remove PAH vapors from the injection stream. Thus, PAH-laden particles were observed to off-gas in the near absence of vapor phase PAHs during the initial stages of the 8-hour experiments. The large denuder was designed as a parallel plate system, made of activated charcoal impregnated filters. It was characterized to remove greater than 90% of PAH vapors from the diesel injection system. During the experiments, air samples were collected in the chamber at 20-minute intervals for the first 2 hours, and hourly thereafter. The sampling system consisted of an XAD-4 coated annular denuder, followed by a quartz-fiber filter, which is then followed by a second annular denuder. Sample extracts were analyzed on Hewlett-Packard GC/MS. Results from these experiments are compared to output from a radial diffusion computer model, detailed in another paper (``Modeling the Mass Transfer of Semi-Volatile Organics in Combustion Aerosols`` by Jay R. Odum and Richard M. Kamens).
OSTI ID:
197495
Report Number(s):
CONF-9405167--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English