Water uptake and chemical composition of fresh aerosols generated in open burning of biomass

Abstract

As part of the Fire Lab at Missoula Experiments (FLAME) in 2006-2007, we examined hygroscopic properties of particles emitted from open combustion of 33 select biomass fuels. Measurements of humidification growth factors for subsaturated water relative humidity (RH) conditions were made with a hygroscopic tandem differential mobility analyzer (HTDMA) for dry particle sizes of 50, 100 and 250 nm. Results were then fit to a single-parameter model to obtain the hygroscopicity parameter, κ. Particles in freshly emitted biomass smoke exhibited a wide range of hygroscopicity (individual modes with 0 <1.0), spanning a range from the hygroscopicity of fresh diesel soot emissions to that of pure inorganic salts commonly found in the ambient aerosol. Smoke aerosols dominated by carbonaceous species typically had a unimodal growth factor with corresponding mean κCombining double low line0.1 (range of 0