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OUTDOOR SMOG CHAMBER EXPERIMENTS TO TEST PHOTOCHEMICAL MODELS
Citation:
Feffries, H., R. Kamens, K. Sexron, AND A. Gerhardt. OUTDOOR SMOG CHAMBER EXPERIMENTS TO TEST PHOTOCHEMICAL MODELS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C., EPA/600/3-82/016A.
Description:
The smog chamber facility of the University of North Carolina was used in a study to provide experimental data for developing and testing kinetic mechanisms of photochemical smog formation. The smog chamber, located outdoors in rural North Carolina, is an A-frame structure covered with Teflon film. Because the chamber is partitioned into two sections, each with a volume of 156 cu m, two experiments can be conducted simultaneously. The dual chamber is operated under natural conditions of solar radiation, temperature, and relative humidity. In this study, 115 dual all-day experiments were conducted using NOx and a variety of organic species. The organic compounds investigated included various paraffins, olefins, aromatics and oxygenates, both singly and in mixtures of two or more components. In this report the data collected over the three-year period of the study are described. The experimental procedures and analytical methods used in this study and the limitations and uncertainties of the data are discussed. Guidance for modeling of the data is also given, including a detailed discussion of how to estimate photolytic rate constants from the available UV and total solar radiation data and how to treat such chamber artifacts as dilution, wall sources and losses of pollutants, and reactivity of the background air.