Models for the sorption of volatile organic compounds by diesel soot and atmospheric aerosols

Abstract

The solvation parameter model is used to characterize interactions responsible for the sorption of varied organic compounds by diesel soot and atmospheric aerosols at 15 °C and 50% relative humidity. Individual models are obtained for eight aerosol samples characterized as urban, suburban, rural and coastal. Combining the individual aerosol models resulted in a general aerosol model with only a minor loss of modeling power for alkanecarboxylic acids and low-molecular weight alcohols compared with the individual models. A second group of compounds identified as weak nitrogen-containing bases were consistent outliers to all models most likely due to participation in ion-exchange interactions not considered by the models. The diesel soot and atmospheric aerosols exhibit similar characteristics with respect to their sorption interactions although differences in relative magnitude allow the two particle types to be easily distinguished. Sorption interactions are favored by strong dispersion interactions for both particle types. Of note is the strong hydrogen-bond basicity and relatively weak hydrogen-bond acidity of these materials. The particles are quite dipolar/polarizable and slightly electron lone pair repulsive. The sorption properties of the atmospheric aerosols are influenced by the relative humidity, in particular, the aerosols become significantly more hydrogen-bond acidic at high relative humidity most likely due to incorporation of increasing amounts of condensed or film water in the aerosol phase. Dividing the data into training and test sets suggests that the proposed models are capable of estimating distribution constants (log K) to about 0.20 log units for diesel soot (n = 84) and 0.14 log units for the general atmospheric aerosol model (n = 385) where n indicates the number of compounds included in the model.