Recent advances on SOA formation in indoor air, fate and strategies for SOA characterization in indoor air - A review

Recent studies proves that indoor air chemistry differs in many aspects from atmospheric one. People send up to 90 % of their life indoors being exposed to pollutants present in gas, particle and solid phase. Particle phase indoor is composed of particles emitted from various sources, among which there is an indoor source - secondary chemical reactions leading to formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Lately, researchers' attentions turned towards the ultrafine particles, for there are still a lot of gaps in knowledge concerning this field of study, while there is evidence of negative influence of ultrafine particles on human health. Presented review sums up current knowledge about secondary particle formation in indoor environment and development of analytical techniques applied to study those processes. The biggest concern today is studying ROS, for their lifetime in indoor air is very short due to reactions at the very beginning of terpene oxidation process. Another interesting aspect that is recently discovered is monoterpene autooxidation process that leads to HOMs formation that in turn can influence SOA formation yield. A complex studies covering gas phase and particle phase characterization, but also toxicological studies are crucial to fully understand indoor air chemistry leading to ultrafine particle formation.

A QSAR for the prediction of rate constants for the reaction of VOCs with nitrate radicals

A QSAR for the prediction of rate constants for the degradation of volatile organic compounds by nitrate radicals is developed using the Partial Least Squares technique. The QSAR is based on experimental data published in the literature for 260 compounds. They are modeled by a set of calculated descriptors from standard descriptor generation tools and from quantum chemistry. Out of several diversity-based partitionings of the data set a diverse set of 99 compounds turned out to be the optimum choice with regard to simplicity and performance. The final QSAR model is characterized by r(2) = 0.831 (fit) and q(2) = 0.823 (prediction), and by an r(2)pred = 0.862 for the n = 155 external validation set. The QSAR needs 3 latent variables. The most important descriptors for the QSAR are the ionization potential, obtained from density functional theory, and the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital, which are modulated by fingerprints indicating the presence of specific molecular fragments like functional groups or ring systems. The applicability domain of the new QSAR was studied for some compound classes which are important for the crop protection industry, including (di)hydroxbenzenes and heterocyclic compounds.

Volatile organic compound conversion by ozone, hydroxyl radicals, and nitrate radicals in residential indoor air: Magnitudes and impacts of oxidant sources

Indoor chemistry may be initiated by reactions of ozone (O₃), the hydroxyl radical (OH), or the nitrate radical (NO₃) with volatile organic compounds (VOC). The principal indoor source of O₃ is air exchange, while OH and NO₃ formation are considered as primarily from O₃ reactions with alkenes and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), respectively. Herein, we used time-averaged models for residences to predict O₃, OH, and NO₃ concentrations and their impacts on conversion of typical residential VOC profiles, within a Monte Carlo framework that varied inputs probabilistically. We accounted for established oxidant sources, as well as explored the importance of two newly realized indoor sources: (i) the photolysis of nitrous acid (HONO) indoors to generate OH and (ii) the reaction of stabilized Criegee intermediates (SCI) with NO₂ to generate NO₃. We found total VOC conversion to be dominated by reactions both with O₃, which almost solely reacted with d-limonene, and also with OH, which reacted with d-limonene, other terpenes, alcohols, aldehydes, and aromatics. VOC oxidation rates increased with air exchange, outdoor O₃, NO₂ and d-limonene sources, and indoor photolysis rates; and they decreased with O₃ deposition and nitric oxide (NO) sources. Photolysis was a strong OH formation mechanism for high NO, NO₂, and HONO settings, but SCI/NO₂ reactions weakly generated NO₃ except for only a few cases.