Technical note: Dispersion of cooking-generated aerosols from an urban street canyon

Abstract

Abstract. The dispersion of cooking-generated aerosols from an urban street canyon is examined with building-resolving computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Using a comprehensive urban CFD model (PALM) with a sectional aerosol module (SALSA), emissions from deep-frying and boiling are considered for near-ground and elevated sources. With representative choices of the source flux, the inclusion of aerosol dynamic processes decreases the mean canyon-averaged number concentration by 15 %–40 % for cooking emissions, whereas the effect is significantly weaker for traffic-generated aerosols. The effects of deposition and coagulation are comparable for boiling, but coagulation dominates for deep-frying. Deposition is maximised inside the leeward corner vortices, while coagulation increases away from the source. The characteristic timescales are invoked to explain the spatial structure of deposition and coagulation. In particular, the relative difference between number concentrations for simulations with and without coagulation is strongly correlated with the ageing of particles along fluid trajectories or the mean tracer age. It is argued that, for a specific emission spectrum, the qualitative nature of the aerosol dynamics within urban canopies is determined by the ratio of the aerosol timescales to the relevant dynamical timescale (e.g. the mean age of air).