Kinetics and Products of Heterogeneous Oxidation of Oleic acid, Linoleic acid and Linolenic acid in Aerosol Particles by Hydroxyl radicals

A significant mass fraction of atmospheric aerosols is composed of a variety of oxidized organic compounds with varying functional groups that may affect the rate at which they chemically age. Here we study the heterogeneous reaction of OH radicals with different sub-micron, alkenoic acid particles: Oleic acid (OA), Linoleic acid (LA), and Linolenic acid (LNA), in the presence of H2O2 and O2. This research explores how OH addition reactions initiate chain reactions that rapidly transform the chemical composition of an organic particle. Particles are chemically aged in a photochemical flow tube reactor where they are exposed to OH radicals (~ 1011 molecule cm-3 s) that are produced by the photolysis of H2O2 at 254 nm. The aerosols are then sized and their composition analyzed via Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Ionization (APCI). Detailed kinetic measurements show that the reactive uptake coefficient is larger than 1, indicating the presence of secondary chemistry occurring in the condensed phase. Reactive uptake coefficient is found to scale linearly with the number of double bonds present in the molecule. In addition, the reactive uptake coefficient is found to depend sensitively upon the concentrations of O2 in the photochemical flow tube reactor, indicating that O2 plays a role in secondary chemistry. In the absence of O2 the reactive uptake coefficient increases to ~ 8, 5 and 3 for LNA, LA, and OA, respectively. The reactive uptake coefficient approaches values of 6, 4 and 2 for LNA, LA, and OA respectively when 18% of the total nitrogen flow is replaced with O2. Mechanistic pathways and products will also be presented herein.