References

ACP

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

ACP

Atmos. Chem. Phys.

1680-7324

Copernicus Publications

Göttingen, Germany

10.5194/acp-11-5277-2011

Homogenous nucleation of sulfuric acid and water at close to atmospherically relevant conditions

Brus

¹ ² Neitola

² Hyvärinen

A.-P.

² Petäjä

³ Vanhanen

³ Sipilä

³ Paasonen

³ Kulmala

³ Lihavainen

Laboratory of Aerosol Chemistry and Physics, Institute of Chemical Process Fundamentals Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Rozvojová 135, 165 02 Prague 6, Czech Republic

Finnish Meteorological Institute, Erik Palménin aukio 1, P.O. Box 503, 00100 Helsinki, Finland

Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014 Helsinki, Finland

06 06 2011

11 11 5277 5287

2011

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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In this study the homogeneous nucleation rates in the system of sulfuric acid and water were measured by using a flow tube technique. The goal was to directly compare particle formation rates obtained from atmospheric measurements with nucleation rates of freshly nucleated particles measured with particle size magnifier (PSM) which has detection efficiency of unity for particles having mobility diameter of 1.5 nm. The gas phase sulfuric acid concentration in this study was measured with the chemical ionization mass spectrometer (CIMS), commonly used in field measurements. The wall losses of sulfuric acid were estimated from measured concentration profiles along the flow tube. The initial concentrations of sulfuric acid estimated from loss measurements ranged from 108 to 3 × 109 molecules cm−3. The nucleation rates obtained in this study cover about three orders of magnitude from 10−1 to 102 cm−3 s−1 for commercial ultrafine condensation particle counter (UCPC) TSI model 3025A and from 101 to 104 cm−3 s−1 for PSM. The nucleation rates and the slopes (dlnJ/dln [H2SO4]) show satisfactory agreement when compared to empirical kinetic and activation models and the latest atmospheric nucleation data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first experimental work providing temperature dependent nucleation rate measurements using a high efficiency particle counter with a cut-off-size of 1.5 nm together with direct measurements of gas phase sulfuric acid concentration.

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