In densely populated areas, traffic is a significant source of atmospheric aerosol particles. Owing to their small size and complicated chemical and physical characteristics, atmospheric particles resulting from traffic emissions pose a significant risk to human health and also contribute to anthropogenic forcing of climate. Previous research has established that vehicles directly emit primary aerosol particles and also contribute to secondary aerosol particle formation by emitting aerosol precursors. Here, we extend the urban atmospheric aerosol characterization to cover nanocluster aerosol (NCA) particles and show that a major fraction of particles emitted by road transportation are in a previously unmeasured size range of 1.3-3.0 nm. For instance, in a semiurban roadside environment, the NCA represented 20-54% of the total particle concentration in ambient air. The observed NCA concentrations varied significantly depending on the traffic rate and wind direction. The emission factors of NCA for traffic were 2.4·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in a roadside environment, 2.6·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in a street canyon, and 2.9·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 in an on-road study throughout Europe. Interestingly, these emissions were not associated with all vehicles. In engine laboratory experiments, the emission factor of exhaust NCA varied from a relatively low value of 1.6·10 12 (kg fuel ) −1 to a high value of 4.3·10 15 (kg fuel ) −1 . These NCA emissions directly affect particle concentrations and human exposure to nanosized aerosol in urban areas, and potentially may act as nanosized condensation nuclei for the condensation of atmospheric low-volatile organic compounds.nanocluster aerosol | atmospheric aerosol | combustion-derived nanoparticles | air pollution | traffic emission D etailed characterization of aerosol sources is required to understand climate impacts and health effects of atmospheric aerosols, as well as to develop technologies and policies capable of mitigating air pollution in urbanized areas. In densely populated areas, one of the most significant source of particles is traffic (1, 2). Owing to their small size and complicated chemical and physical characteristics (3-6), atmospheric particles resulting from traffic emissions pose a significant risk to human health (7-12), and also contribute to anthropogenic forcing of climate (13,14). Previous research on vehicular emissions has demonstrated the presence of soot and ash (3, 15) and solid sub-10-nm core particles (4-6) in primary emissions from vehicles and engines and their variation, depending on vehicle technologies (4, 6), the properties of fuels and lubricant oils (15, 16), and driving conditions (15-17). In addition to particles, exhaust typically contains species that reside in the gaseous phase in the undiluted high-temperature exhaust (5, 18, 19) but condense or even nucleate to the particle phase immediately after the exhaust is released to the atmosphere. Here, we term such aerosols delayed primary aerosols, because particle precursors exist already in the u...

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Diesel exhaust gaseous sulphuric acid (GSA) concentrations and particle size distributions, concentrations, and volatility were studied at four driving conditions with a heavy duty diesel engine equipped with oxidative exhaust after-treatment. Low sulfur fuel and lubricant oil were used in the study. The concentration of the exhaust GSA was observed to vary depending on the engine driving history and load. The GSA affected the volatile particle fraction at high engine loads; higher GSA mole fraction was followed by an increase in volatile nucleation particle concentration and size as well as increase of size of particles possessing nonvolatile core. The GSA did not affect the number of nonvolatile particles. At low and medium loads, the exhaust GSA concentration was low and any GSA driven changes in particle population were not observed. Results show that during the exhaust cooling and dilution processes, besides critical in volatile nucleation particle formation, GSA can change the characteristics of all nucleation mode particles. Results show the dual nature of the nucleation mode particles so that the nucleation mode can include simultaneously volatile and nonvolatile particles, and fulfill the previous results for the nucleation mode formation, especially related to the role of GSA in formation processes.

The nanoparticle resolution of Electrical Low Pressure Impactor (ELPI) has been improved by designing and manufacturing a new impactor stage for the impactor. The measured cutpoint of the stage is 16.7 nm. The additional stage does not affect the properties (e.g. cutpoints) of other impactor stages. The performance of the new impactor construction was evaluated with laboratory and heavy duty diesel exhaust measurements. Based on the laboratory measurements the lower limit for the measured geometric mean diameter is expanded down to 11 nm. The diesel exhaust measurements made parallel with the new and the old construction show that the results are equal at large particle sizes. For nanoparticles, the resolution and precision are improved with the new construction. Using the new impactor stage and density analyzing method density can be analyzed even for 10 nm particles.

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