Thermodynamic Study of Water Activity in Atmospheric Aerosol Particles.

Atmospheric aerosols are complex mixtures of various inorganic−organic compounds and play significant roles in atmospheric chemistry, earth’s climate, and global radiation budget as well as in human health. Hygroscopicity is the ability of the particle to uptake water from surrounding environment. Hygroscopicity can directly control the size distribution, chemical reactivity, and phase state of aerosol particles and thus contribute to radiative forcing on the climate system, including both the direct forcing by absorbing or scattering light and indirect forcing through activation of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Interactions between inorganic−organic may have a crucial impact on the hygroscopic behaviour of aerosol droplets and lead to discrepancies from ideal thermodynamic behavior. The non-ideality of mixtures in aerosol particles influences the gas-particle partitioning and affects the physical state of the condensed phase, potentially leading to liquid-liquid phase separation. Thermodynamic models are key tools to gain insight into the non-ideal behavior of organic-inorganic mixtures. By means of activity coefficients, non-ideal behaviour can be taken into account. In this study we developed a thermodynamic segment-based local composition model named NRTL (Non Random Two Liquid) to describe the aktivity coefficients of organic and inorganic aerosol particles.\