Investigating the effectiveness of condensation sink based on heterogeneous nucleation theory
Santeri Tuovinen, Jenni Kontkanen, Jingkun Jiang, Markku Kulmala
Abstract
New Particle Formation (NPF) is regularly observed to occur in heavily polluted Chinese megacities. However, in these NPF events, the survival probability of small clusters into larger aerosol particles is higher than theoretically predicted. One explanation for this could be that the loss rate of clusters due to scavenging by pre-existing particles, which is described by condensation sink, is lower than expected. In this study, we describe the loss of clusters due to condensation sink by using heterogeneous nucleation theory, and investigate if ineffectiveness of heterogeneous nucleation can result in a significantly lowered effective condensation sink. We find that in principle it is possible that due to properties of the system there is no heterogeneous nucleation, and this can significantly influence the magnitude of effective condensation sink and thus increase the survival probability of clusters.