Hygroscopicity and mass transfer limit of mixed glutaric acid/MgSO4/water particles

Feng-Min Wu; Xiao-Wei Wang; Shu-Feng Pang; Yun-Hong Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.saa.2021.119790

Hygroscopicity and mass transfer limit of mixed glutaric acid/MgSO₄/water particles

Spectrochim Acta A Mol Biomol Spectrosc. 2021 Sep 5:258:119790. doi: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119790. Epub 2021 Apr 8.

Authors

Feng-Min Wu¹, Xiao-Wei Wang¹, Shu-Feng Pang², Yun-Hong Zhang²

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutics, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang 471023, PR China; The Institute of Chemical Physics, Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, PR China.
² The Institute of Chemical Physics, Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, PR China.

PMID: 33946015
DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2021.119790

Abstract

Tropospheric aerosols are usually complex mixtures of inorganic and organic components, which show non-ideal behavior in hygroscopicity, mass transfer, and partitioning between gas and aerosols. In this study, we applied a novel approach based on a combination of a pulse RH controlling system and a rapid scan vacuum FTIR spectrometer to investigate the mass transfer limit of magnesium sulfate/glutaric acid (GA) mixture aerosol particles. The liquid water band area of the aerosols is used to reveal the mass transfer limit during the rapid pulse RH downward and upward processes. Partitioning equilibrium between the aerosol particles and water gas phase is observed at the higher RH range (73-50%). When the RH is lower than 40%, there is a hysteresis for the liquid water content changing with the RH, indicating the limited water mass transfer in the aerosols.

Keywords: Hygroscopicity; Magnesium sulfate/glutaric acid; Mass transfer limit; Pulse RH.