Grantee Research Project Results

2024 Progress Report: Developing mechanisms for secondary organic aerosol from oxygenated volatile organic compounds in biomass burning and volatile chemical product emissions

EPA Grant Number: R840008
Title: Developing mechanisms for secondary organic aerosol from oxygenated volatile organic compounds in biomass burning and volatile chemical product emissions
Investigators: Jathar, Shantanu , Pierce, Jeffrey
Institution: Colorado State University
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: August 1, 2020 through April 24, 2025
Project Period Covered by this Report: August 1, 2023 through July 31,2024
Project Amount: $400,000
RFA: Chemical Mechanisms to Address New Challenges in Air Quality Modeling (2019) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Watersheds , Endocrine Disruptors , Environmental Engineering , Early Career Awards , Air Quality and Air Toxics , Air

Objective:

The goal of this research is to improve the representation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation from oxygenated volatile organic compounds (OVOCs) in biomass burning and volatile chemical product (VCP) sources in chemical mechanisms. We hypothesize that the inclusion of oxygenated VOCs, particularly phenols, furans, glycols, and glycol ethers, in chemical mechanisms will improve predictions of SOA formation and properties in air quality models (AQMs).

Progress Summary:

The project team was able to partly work on all three objectives in Year 4. We continued model development on the primary tool used in this work, i.e., the Statistical Oxidation Model-TwO Moment Aerosol Sectional (SOM-TOMAS) model to simulate the dependence of temperature on SOA formation in oxidation flow reactors (OFRs). Kinetic, process-level models were used to study SOA formation from terpenes and terpenoids present in personal care and cleaning products and understand the evolution of organic aerosol (OA) at long photochemical ages for laboratory experiments performed on biomass burning emissions. Finally, reduced schemes / simplified models were used to study the atmospheric evolution of OA in wildfire and urban plumes.

Future Activities:

In Year 5 (no-cost extension year), we will (i) evaluate chemical mechanisms for their ability to reproduce SOA and O₃ formation from oxygenated VOCs (relevant for VCPs and biomass burning) and (ii) continue to find collaborators interested in using our mechanisms and parameterizations for SOA in 3D atmospheric models.

Journal Articles on this Report : 3 Displayed | Download in RIS Format

Publications Views
Other project views:	All 42 publications	7 publications in selected types	All 7 journal articles

Publications
Type	Citation	Project	Document Sources
Journal Article	Dearden A, He Y, Akherati A, Lim CY, Coggon MM, Koss AR, de Gouw J, Warneke C, Yee LD, Seinfeld JH, Cappa CD, Kroll JH, Pierce JR, Jathar SH. Multi-day photochemical evolution of organic aerosol from biomass burning emissions. Environmental Science:Atmospheres. 2024;4(8):925-41.	R840008 (2024)	Full-text: RSC - Full text HTML Exit
Journal Article	Pan T, Lambe AT, Hu W, He Y, Hu M, Zhou H, Wang X, Hu Q, Chen H, Zhao Y, Huang Y, Worsnop DR, Peng Z, Morris MA, Day DA, Campuzano-Jost P, Jimenez JL, Jathar SH. A comprehensive evaluation of enhanced temperature influence on gas and aerosol chemistry in the lamp-enclosed oxidation flow reactor (OFR) system. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques. 2024;17(16):4915-39.	R840008 (2024)	Full-text: Copernicus - Full text HTML Exit
Journal Article	Shrivastava M, Fan J, Zhang Y, Rasool QZ, Zhao B, Shen J, Pierce JR, Jathar SH, Akherati A, Zhang J, Zaveri RA, Gaudet B, Liu Y, Andreae MO, Pohlker ML, Donahue NM, Wang Y, Seinfeld JH. Intense formation of secondary ultrafine particles from Amazonian vegetation fires and their invigoration of deep clouds and precipitation. One Earth. 2024;7(6):1029-43.	R840008 (2024)	Full-text: Elsevier - Full Text HTML Exit

Supplemental Keywords:

volatile chemical products, wildfires, volatile organic compounds, secondary organic aerosol, heterogeneous chemistry, reduced-form models/parameters

Relevant Websites:

N/A

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.