The influence of particle composition upon the evolution of urban ultrafine diesel particles on the neighbourhood scale

Abstract

A recent study demonstrated that diesel particles in urban air undergo evaporative shrinkage when advected to a cleaner atmosphere (Harrison et al., 2016). We explore, in a structured and systematic way, the sensitivity of nucleation-mode diesel particles (diameter  classCombining double low line"inline-formula"< 30 nm) to changes in particle composition, saturation vapour pressure, and the mass accommodation coefficient. We use a multicomponent aerosol microphysics model based on surrogate molecule ( classCombining double low line"inline-formula"C16ĝ'C32 classCombining double low line"inline-formula"