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Surface Tension Effects of Humic-Like Substances in the Aqueous Extract of Tropospheric Fine Aerosol

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Abstract

Organic aerosol constituents can influence the surface tension of nucleating cloud droplets and thereby modify the critical supersaturation necessary to activate aerosol particles. Model calculations, based on experiments carried out with different surrogates, led to contradictory conclusions on the effect of organic components on activation, indicating that the results depend very much on the surrogate selected. In order to reduce this uncertainty surface tension measurements were performed on real atmospheric aerosol components. Humic-like substances (HULIS) that accounted for 60% of the water-soluble organic carbon present in rural aerosol were isolated from 32 samples covering different seasons. The isolated organic matter present in a concentration of about 1 g L−1, decreased the surface tension of the aqueous solutions by 25–42% as compared to pure water. This effect was further enhanced when humic-like substances were mixed with ammonium sulphate. In order to support model calculations Szyskowski functions were fitted to the data to formulate the surface tension effect as a function of concentration.

Finally, natural humic substances (fulvic and humic acids) were investigated under the same conditions. The experiments revealed that the surface tension decreasing effect of atmospheric humic-like substances differed from that of the studied terrestrial and aquatic humic substances: the latter substances decreased the surface tension of the aqueous solution to a lesser extent (7–23%) than atmospheric HULIS. This deviation can be explained with the different composition (e.g. the ratio of aromatic to aliphatic moieties) of the substances investigated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Air Chemistry Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, University of Veszprém, 8201, Veszprém, P.O. Box 158, Hungary

    Gyula Kiss

  2. Department of Colloid Chemistry, University of Szeged, 6720, Szeged, Aradi Vt. 1, Hungary

    Etelka Tombácz

  3. Institute of Applied Environmental Research, Stockholm University, 106 91, Stockholm, Sweden

    Gyula Kiss & Hans-Christen Hansson

Authors
  1. Gyula Kiss
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  2. Etelka Tombácz
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  3. Hans-Christen Hansson
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Correspondence to Gyula Kiss.

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Kiss, G., Tombácz, E. & Hansson, HC. Surface Tension Effects of Humic-Like Substances in the Aqueous Extract of Tropospheric Fine Aerosol. J Atmos Chem 50, 279–294 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10874-005-5079-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10874-005-5079-5

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