Surface tension of atmospheric wet aerosol and cloud/fog droplets in relation to their organic carbon content and chemical composition

✍ Scribed by Maria Cristina Facchini; Stefano Decesari; Mihaela Mircea; Sandro Fuzzi; Giuseppe Loglio

• Book ID: 114377061
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 117 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1352-2310
• DOI: 10.1016/s1352-2310(00)00237-5

✦ Synopsis

A decrease in surface tension with respect to pure water was observed in wet aerosol and cloud/fog samples. The measured decrease of surface tension is positively correlated with the concentration of total soluble organic compounds in the samples. On the basis of a previously developed methodology to fractionate soluble organic compounds into three di!erent classes (neutral compounds, mono-and dicarboxylic acids and polycarboxylic acids), we investigated the surface-active behaviour of the compounds within each of these classes. Polycarboxylic acids having a molecular structure analogous to that of humic substances (humic-like substances) were found to be the most e!ective surface-active species within the droplets: three times more e!ective than mono-and dicarboxylic acids and one order of magnitude more than neutral compounds.