A New Oxidation Flow Reactor for Measuring Secondary Aerosol Formation of Rapidly Changing Emission Sources.

Oxidation flow reactors or environmental chambers can be used to estimate secondary aerosol formation potential of different emission sources. Emissions from anthropogenic sources, such as vehicles, often vary on short timescales. For example, to identify the vehicle driving conditions that lead to high potential secondary aerosol emissions, rapid oxidation of exhaust is needed. However, the residence times in environmental chambers and in most oxidation flow reactors are too long to study these transient effects. Here, we present a new oxidation flow reactor, TSAR (TUT Secondary Aerosol Reactor), which has a short residence time and near-laminar flow conditions. This allows studying e.g. the effect of vehicle driving conditions on secondary aerosol formation potential of the exhaust. We show that the flow pattern in TSAR is nearly laminar and particle losses are negligible. The secondary organic aerosol (SOA) produced in TSAR has a similar mass spectrum as the SOA produced in the state-of-the-art reactor, PAM (Potential Aerosol Mass). Both reactors produce the same amount of mass, but the TSAR has a higher time-resolution. We also show that the TSAR is capable of measuring secondary aerosol formation potential of a vehicle during a transient driving cycle, and that the fast response of the TSAR reveals how different driving conditions affect the amount of formed secondary aerosol. Thus, the TSAR can be used to study rapidly changing emission sources, especially the vehicular emissions during transient driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]