Volatility Measurements of Oxygenated Volatile Organics from Fresh and Aged Residential Wood Burning Emissions

Abstract

Residential wood combustion (RWC) is a dominant source of anthropogenic aerosol in urban areas. Complexities in aerosol chemical composition, semivolatile behavior, and secondary processing make estimating RWC impacts on climate and air quality challenging. A chemical ionization mass spectrometer with a filter inlet for gas and aerosols measured the gas-to-particle partitioning of organic compounds emitted from log wood and pellet burning stoves. Emissions were aged in an oxidation flow reactor to assess changes in the volatilities of the secondary aerosol. Effective saturation vapor concentrations (C*) of the measured species were derived using both the measured particle-to-gas concentration ratio (P i /G i ) and vapor pressure measurements (p i 0 ) calibrated using the maximum temperature during evaporation. These were used to derive new molecular formula (MF) parameterizations and were compared to selected previous parameterization. The fresh wood stove emissions were less volatile than those of the pellet stove (particle fractions of 0.96 vs 0.69), likely caused by poorer combustion conditions, producing a greater particle sink for organic vapors. After aging, the volatility of the emissions remained broadly similar, whereas all MF parameterizations showed increasing volatility. This was likely due to the measurement techniques capturing nonideal effects of partitioning that MF parameterizations cannot.