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. 2020 Oct 20;53(10):2034-2043.
doi: 10.1021/acs.accounts.0c00246. Epub 2020 Sep 14.

New Multiphase Chemical Processes Influencing Atmospheric Aerosols, Air Quality, and Climate in the Anthropocene

Affiliations

New Multiphase Chemical Processes Influencing Atmospheric Aerosols, Air Quality, and Climate in the Anthropocene

Hang Su et al. Acc Chem Res. .

Abstract

Atmospheric aerosols and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) are strongly affecting human health and climate in the Anthropocene, that is, in the current era of globally pervasive and rapidly increasing human influence on planet Earth. Poor air quality associated with high aerosol concentrations is among the leading health risks worldwide, causing millions of attributable excess deaths and years of life lost every year. Besides their health impact, aerosols are also influencing climate through interactions with clouds and solar radiation with an estimated negative total effective radiative forcing that may compensate about half of the positive radiative forcing of carbon dioxide but exhibits a much larger uncertainty. Heterogeneous and multiphase chemical reactions on the surface and in the bulk of solid, semisolid, and liquid aerosol particles have been recognized to influence aerosol formation and transformation and thus their environmental effects. However, atmospheric multiphase chemistry is not well understood because of its intrinsic complexity of dealing with the matter in multiple phases and the difficulties of distinguishing its effect from that of gas phase reactions.Recently, research on atmospheric multiphase chemistry received a boost from the growing interest in understanding severe haze formation of very high PM2.5 concentrations in polluted megacities and densely populated regions. State-of-the-art models suggest that the gas phase reactions, however, are not capturing the high concentrations and rapid increase of PM2.5 observed during haze events, suggesting a gap in our understanding of the chemical mechanisms of aerosol formation. These haze events are characterized by high concentrations of aerosol particles and high humidity, especially favoring multiphase chemistry. In this Account, we review recent advances that we have made, as well as current challenges and future perspectives for research on multiphase chemical processes involved in atmospheric aerosol formation and transformation. We focus on the following questions: what are the key reaction pathways leading to aerosol formation under polluted conditions, what is the relative importance of multiphase chemistry versus gas-phase chemistry, and what are the implications for the development of efficient and reliable air quality control strategies? In particular, we discuss advances and challenges related to different chemical regimes of sulfate, nitrate, and secondary organic aerosols (SOAs) under haze conditions, and we synthesize new insights into the influence of aerosol water content, aerosol pH, phase state, and nanoparticle size effects. Overall, there is increasing evidence that multiphase chemistry plays an important role in aerosol formation during haze events. In contrast to the gas phase photochemical reactions, which are self-buffered against heavy pollution, multiphase reactions have a positive feedback mechanism, where higher particle matter levels accelerate multiphase production, which further increases the aerosol concentration resulting in a series of record-breaking pollution events. We discuss perspectives to fill the gap of the current understanding of atmospheric multiphase reactions that involve multiple physical and chemical processes from bulk to nanoscale and from regional to global scales. A synthetic approach combining laboratory experiments, field measurements, instrument development, and model simulations is suggested as a roadmap to advance future research.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Aqueous-phase sulfate production by sulfur dioxide oxidation under characteristic conditions. Sulfate production rates for (a) cloud droplets and (b) Beijing haze plotted against pH values. Light blue and gray shaded areas indicate characteristic pH ranges for cloudwater under clean to moderately polluted conditions and aerosol water during severe haze episodes in Beijing, respectively. The colored lines represent sulfate production rates calculated for different aqueous-phase reaction pathways with oxidants: hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), ozone (O3), transition metal ions (TMIs), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). The black lines represent the total reaction rates. Adapted from ref (1) under the terms of Creative Commons CC BY license.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Concentration-dependent surface tension of NaCl solution determined by Molecular Dynamic simulations. (b) Influence of ionic strength (I) on the rate of aqueous sulfate-producing reactions. The enhancement factor is defined as the ratio of the modeled or measured sulfate production rate coefficient for nonideal solutions to the modeled rate assuming ideal solution. Solid lines, only the I-dependence of the aqueous-phase rate constant (k) was considered; dashed lines, the I-dependence of both k and effective Henry’s constant for SO2 and H2O2 were considered; squares, measured enhancement factor. Adapted with permission from refs (1) and (42) under the Creative Commons CC BY license.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Comparisons of the ROI-T scheme and previous laboratory-derived schemes with global observations of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP, ng m–3). (b) Diagram of temperature/RH effects on BaP transport in ambient air. Reprinted with permission from ref (4) under the Creative Commons CC BY license.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Three-dimensional liquid–solid equilibrium phase diagrams for the ammonium sulfate (AS)–water system in the coordinates of inverse diameter (1/Ds), temperature (T), and AS mass fraction (xs). The solid circles represent data of the bulk phase diagram of aqueous AS solution, size-dependent melting temperature of ice, and solubility of AS. The surfaces (colored by temperature) are estimated from polynomial fitting, showing the equilibrium between liquid and crystalline phases. (b) Dependence of critical diameter on bulk phase transition temperature. Inverse critical diameters of liquefaction at 298 K (Ds,c–1) are plotted against bulk phase transition temperatures (Tbulk) for aqueous AS (blue solid circle), aqueous sodium chloride (NaCl, red solid circle), and low chain length polystyrene (PS, green open diamond). The data points are observations, and the dotted line is a linear fit to all data through the point of [298 K, Ds–1 = 0]. The orange dashed line bounded area indicates the parameter range estimated for atmospheric biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Reprinted with permission from ref (3) under the Creative Commons CC BY license.

References

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