The role of organic condensation on ultrafine particle growth during nucleation events

Abstract

Abstract. A new aerosol dynamics model (DMANx) has been developed that simulates the aerosol size/composition distribution and includes the condensation of organic vapors on nanoparticles through the implementation of the recently developed Volatility Basis Set framework. Simulations were performed for Hyytiala (Finland) and Finokalia (Greece), two locations with different organic sources where detailed measurements were available to constrain the new model. We investigate the effect of condensation of organics and chemical aging reactions of secondary organic aerosol (OA) on ultrafine particle growth and particle number concentration. This work highlights the importance of the pathways of oxidation of biogenic volatile organic compounds and the production of extremely low-volatility organics. At Hyytiala, organic condensation dominates the growth process of new particles. The low-volatility secondary OA contributes to particle growth during the early growth stage, but after a few hours most of the growth is due to semi-volatile secondary OA. At Finokalia, simulations show that organics have a complementary role to new particle growth contributing 45% to the total mass of new particles. Condensation of organics increases the number concentration of particles that can act as CCN (N100) by 13% at Finokalia and 25% at Hyytiala. The sensitivity of our results to the surface tension used is discussed.