Find in Library

<p>Refractory black carbon (rBC) aerosols play an important role in air quality and climate change, yet highly time-resolved and detailed investigations on the physicochemical properties of rBC and its associated coating are still scarce. In this work, we used a laser-only Aerodyne soot particle aerosol mass spectrometer (SP-AMS) to exclusively measure rBC-containing (rBCc) particles, and we compared their properties with those of the total nonrefractory submicron particles (NR-PM<span class="inline-formula">₁</span>) measured in parallel by a high-resolution AMS (HR-AMS) in Shanghai. Observations showed that, overall, rBC was thickly coated, with an average mass ratio of coating to rBC core (<span class="inline-formula"><i>R</i>_BC</span>) of <span class="inline-formula">∼5.0</span> (<span class="inline-formula">±1.7</span>). However, the ratio of the mass of the rBC-coating species to the mass of those species in NR-PM<span class="inline-formula">₁</span> was only 19.1 (<span class="inline-formula">±4.9</span>) %; sulfate tended to condense preferentially on non-rBC particles, so the ratio of the sulfate on rBC to the NR-PM<span class="inline-formula">₁</span> sulfate was only 7.4 (<span class="inline-formula">±2.2</span>) %, while the majority (<span class="inline-formula">72.7±21.0</span> %) of the primary organic aerosols (POA) were associated with rBC. Positive matrix factorization revealed that organics emitted from cooking did not coat rBC, and a portion of the organics that coated rBC was from biomass burning; such organics were unidentifiable in NR-PM<span class="inline-formula">₁</span>. Small rBCc particles were predominantly from traffic, while large-sized ones were often mixed with secondary components and typically had a thick coating. Sulfate and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) species were generated mainly through daytime photochemical oxidation (SOA formation, likely associated with in situ chemical conversion of traffic-related POA to SOA), while nocturnal heterogeneous formation was dominant for nitrate; we also estimated an average time of 5–19 h for those secondary species to coat rBC. During a short period that was affected by ship emissions, particles were characterized as having a high vanadium concentration (on average <span class="inline-formula">6.3±3.1</span> ng m<span class="inline-formula">⁻³</span>) and a mean vanadium/nickel mass ratio of 2.0 (<span class="inline-formula">±0.6</span>). Furthermore, the size-resolved hygroscopicity parameter (<span class="inline-formula"><i>κ</i>_rBCc</span>) of rBCc particles was obtained based on their full chemical characterization, and was parameterized as <span class="inline-formula"><i>κ</i>_rBCc(<i>x</i>)=0.29</span>–0.14 <span class="inline-formula">×</span> <span class="inline-formula"><math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M17" display="inline" overflow="scroll" dspmath="mathml"><mrow><mi>exp⁡</mi><mo>(</mo><mo>-</mo><mn mathvariant="normal">0.006</mn><mo>×</mo><mi>x</mi><mo>)</mo></mrow></math><span><svg:svg xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="80pt" height="12pt" class="svg-formula" dspmath="mathimg" md5hash="5b6eb9c20c6f87971f43711951ccf9a9"><svg:image xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="acp-22-8073-2022-ie00001.svg" width="80pt" height="12pt" src="acp-22-8073-2022-ie00001.png"/></svg:svg></span></span> (where <span class="inline-formula"><i>x</i></span> ranges from 150 to 1000 nm). Under critical supersaturations (SS<span class="inline-formula">_C</span>) of 0.1 % and 0.2 %, the <span class="inline-formula"><i>D</i>₅₀</span> values were 166 (<span class="inline-formula">±16</span>) and 110 (<span class="inline-formula">±5</span>) nm, respectively, and 16 (<span class="inline-formula">±3</span>) % and 59 (<span class="inline-formula">±4</span>) %, respectively, of the rBCc particles by number could be activated into cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). Our findings are valuable for advancing the understanding of BC chemistry as well as the effective control of atmospheric BC pollution.</p>