Secondary organic aerosol formation from straw burning using an oxidation flow reactor


Mattias Hallquist , Hui Wang , Song Guo , Zhijun Wu , Kai Qiao , Rongzhi Tang , Ying Yu , Weizhao Xu , Wenfei Zhu , Liwu Zeng , Xiaofeng Huang , Lingyan He , Maofa Ge , Yujing Mu , Jianmin Chen , Min Shao , Zifa Wang

DOI:10.1016/j.jes.2021.08.049

Received June 01, 2021,Revised , Accepted August 25, 2021, Available online February 21, 2022

Volume 34,2022,Pages 249-258

Herein, we use an oxidation flow reactor, Gothenburg: Potential Aerosol Mass (Go: PAM) reactor, to investigate the secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from wheat straw burning. Biomass burning emissions are exposed to high concentrations of hydroxyl radicals (OH) to simulate processes equivalent to atmospheric oxidation of 0-2.55 days. Primary volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were investigated, and particles were measured before and after the Go: PAM reactor. The influence of water content (i.e. 5% and 11%) in wheat straw was also explored. Two burning stages, the flaming stage, and non-flaming stages, were identified. Primary particle emission factors (EFs) at a water content of 11% (∼3.89 g/kg-fuel) are significantly higher than those at a water content of 5% (∼2.26 g/kg-fuel) during the flaming stage. However, the water content showed no significant influence at the non-flaming stage. EFs of aromatics at a non-flaming stage (321.8±46.2 mg/kg-fuel) are larger than that at a flaming stage (130.9±37.1 mg/kg-fuel). The OA enhancement ratios increased with the increase in OH exposure at first and decreased with the additional increment of OH exposure. The maximum OA enhancement ratio is ∼12 during the non-flaming stages, which is much higher than ∼ 1.7 during the flaming stages. The mass spectrum of the primary wheat burning organic aerosols closely resembles that of resolved biomass burning organic aerosols (BBOA) based on measurements in ambient air. Our results show that large gap (∼60%-90%) still remains to estimate biomass burning SOA if only the oxidation of VOCs were included.

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