ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-5-3187-2005 On the effects of organic matter and sulphur-containing compounds on the CCN activation of combustion particles Petzold A. 1 Gysel M. 2 Vancassel X. 3 Hitzenberger R. 4 Puxbaum H. 5 Vrochticky S. 5 Weingartner E. 6 Baltensperger U. 6 Mirabel P. 7 Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, 82 234 Wessling, Germany School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University of Manchester, P.O. Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics, University of Oxford, Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK Institute for Experimental Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria Institute for Chemical Technologies and Analytics, Vienna University of Technology, Getreidemarkt 9/164UPA, 1060 Vienna, Austria Laboratory of Atmospheric Chemistry, Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), 5232 Villigen, Switzerland Université Louis Pasteur, 28, rue Goethe, 67 000 Strasbourg, France 01 12 2005 5 12 3187 3203 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/5/3187/2005/acp-5-3187-2005.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/5/3187/2005/acp-5-3187-2005.pdf

The European PartEmis project (Measurement and prediction of emissions of aerosols and gaseous precursors from gas turbine engines) was focussed on the characterisation and quantification of exhaust emissions from a gas turbine engine. The combustion aerosol characterisation included on-line measurements of mass and number concentration, size distribution, mixing state, thermal stability of internally mixed particles, hygroscopicity, cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activation potential, and off-line analysis of chemical composition. Based on this extensive data set, the role of sulphuric acid coating and of the organic fraction of the combustion particles for the CCN activation was investigated. Modelling of CCN activation was conducted using microphysical and chemical properties obtained from the measurements as input data. Coating the combustion particles with water-soluble sulphuric acid, increases the potential CCN activation, or lowers the activation diameter, respectively. The adaptation of a K&#246;hler model to the experimental data yielded coatings from 0.1 to 3 vol-% of water-soluble matter, which corresponds to an increase in the fraction of CCN-activated combustion particles from &#x2264;10<sup>&minus;4</sup> to &#x224C;10<sup>&minus;2</sup> at a water vapour saturation ratio S<sub>w</sub>=1.006. Additional particle coating by coagulation of combustion particles and aqueous sulphuric acid particles formed by nucleation further reduces the CCN activation diameter. In contrast, particles containing a large fraction of non-volatile organic compounds grow significantly less at high relative humidity than particles with a lower content of non-volatile OC. The resulting reduction in the potential CCN activation with an increasing fraction of non-volatile OC becomes visible as a trend in the experimental data. While a coating of water-soluble sulphuric acid increases the potential CCN activation, or lowers the activation diameter, respectively, the non-volatile organic compounds, mainly found at lower combustion temperatures, can partially compensate this sulphuric acid-related enhancement of CCN activation of carbonaceous combustion aerosol particles.