Air Quality Researchers Forget To Account For Laboratory Chamber Walls
Monday, April 7, 2014 - 14:32
in Earth & Climate
Vapor losses to the walls of laboratory chambers haven't been properly factored in, according to a new PNAS paper, and that has caused researchers to underestimate the formation of secondary organic aerosol in the atmosphere. It also brings up a lot of questions about what other simplistic mistakes have led to all kinds of air quality claims.Vapor losses can suppress the formation of secondary organic aerosol, which in turn has contributed to the under-prediction of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in climate and air quality models. Secondary organic aerosols are formed primarily through chemistry that occurs in the gas phase. read more