A comparison of infrared spectroscopic methods for the study of heterogeneous reactions occurring on atmospheric aerosol proxies

Abstract

In this paper, the heterogeneous reaction between oleic acid and ozone has been studied using infrared spectroscopy in two distinctly different experimental configurations. The effect of the experiment on the observed products and rates of reaction is compared in order to derive a better understanding of some of the variations in oleic acid reaction rates reported by a range of researchers. One set of measurements is made using thin films of oleic acid in an attenuated total internal reflection configuration, and it is shown that a treatment in which the ATR evanescent wave is convolved with a moving reaction front is essential for the extraction of reliable kinetic data. The results are compared to similar measurements in a recently developed aerosol flow tube equipped with a cross-beam infrared spectroscopic probe. Rates of reaction in the aerosol phase are observed to be approximately 10 times faster and possible reasons for this discussed.