A Wind Tunnel Experimental Study of the Wet Deposition of Atmospheric Pollutants

A Wind Tunnel Study of Turbulence Effects on the Scavenging of Aerosol Particles by Water Drops

Abstract Laboratory experiments are described where the effects of turbulence on the impaction scavenging of aerosol particles by water drops were investigated. During the experiments the drops were freely suspended at their terminal velocities in the Mainz vertical wind tunnel. Turbulence in the tunnel airstream was produced by placing a needle obstruction upstream of the floating drop. The energy dissipation rates e were between 0.03 and 0.5 m2 s−3. The power spectrum covered a range of k values between 102 and 3 × 103 m−1, agreeing with atmospheric observations within this range. Collector drops of 346-μm, 1.68-mm, and 2.88-mm radius were exposed to indium acetylacetonate aerosol particl…

A Theoretical Study of the Wet Removal of Atmospheric Pollutants. Part II: The Uptake and Redistribution Of (NH4)2SO4Particles and SO2Gas Simultaneously Scavenged by Growing Cloud Drops

Abstract A theoretical model has been formulated which allows the processes which control the wet deposition of atmospheric aerosol particles and pollutant gases to be included in cloud dynamic models. The cloud considered in the model was allowed to grow by condensation and collision–coalescence, to remove aerosol particles by nucleation and impaction scavenging, and to remove pollutant gases by convective diffusion. The model was tested by using a simple air-parcel model as the dynamic framework. In this form the model was used to determine the fate of ammonium sulfate [(NH4)2SO4] particles and sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas as they became scavenged by cloud and precipitation drops. Special emp…

A laboratory and theoretical study on the uptake of sulfur dioxide gas by small water drops containing hydrogen peroxide under laminar and turbulent conditions

Abstract Laboratory experiments are described where the uptake of SO2 gas by water drops containing H2O2 is investigated where the taken up S(IV) is quickly converted to S(VI). During the gas uptake the drops were freely suspended at their terminal velocity by means of the Mainz vertical wind tunnel. Two series of experiments were carried out, one with a laminar air flow in the wind tunnel, one with a turbulent air flow in the wind tunnel. Afterwards, the experimental results were compared against model computations using the so-called fully mixed convective diffusion model. The experimental results for laminar flow conditions showed that the fully mixed convective diffusion model for the u…

A Theoretical Study of the Wet Removal of Atmospheric Pollutants. Part V: The Uptake, Redistribution, and Deposition of (NM4)4SO4by a Convective Cloud Containing Ice

Abstract The effects of an ice phase on the wet deposition of aerosol particles was studied by means of the authors’ 2D cloud dynamics model with spectral microphysics applied to the Cooperative Convective Precipitation Experiment in Miles City, Montana, on 19 July 1981. The cloud macrostructure as well as the cloud microstructure simulated by the model was found to agree well with observations. Although no on-site observations were available with respect to the chemical composition of the cloud and rain water, the values predicted by the model compared well with typical nearby measurements. The following conclusions can be derived from the model computations: (1) In confirmation of the aut…

Cloud and Fog Effects and Their Parameterisation in Regional Air Quality Models

For the special purpose of cloud chemistry a tool ASOCC was developed which is able to generate a differential equation system from a given set of chemical kinetics equations. Sensitivity and structure analysis have been performed to evaluate the great number of investigated reactions in the liquid phase and to derive a condensed mechanism for use in regional chemistry-transport models.

A Wind Tunnel and Theoretical Study of the Melting Behavior of Atmospheric Ice Particles. IV: Experiment and Theory for Snow Flakes

Abstract An experiment in the Mainz vertical Cloud Tunnel is described in which natural and laboratory-made aggregates of snow crystals (snow flakes) were melted under free fall conditions in the vertical air stream of the tunnel, which was allowed to warm up at the rates experienced by falling snow flakes in the atmosphere. The variation of the fall mode, the fall velocity, and the percentage of ice melted, as a function of percentage of distance travelled for 99% melting was recorded by cinematography. The laboratory results were confirmed by the results of a theoretical heat transfer model which we developed for the melting of a snow flake. In this model a snow flake was idealized by an …

A New Look at Homogeneous Ice Nucleation in Supercooled Water Drops

Abstract The classical theory for homogeneous ice nucleation in supercooled water is investigated in the light of recent data published in various physico-chemical journal on the physical properties of supercooled water and in the light of recent evidence that the cooperative nature of the hydrogen bonds between water molecules is responsible for a singularity behavior of pure supercooled water at −45°C. Recent rates for homogeneous ice nucleation in supercooled water drops field from field experiments at the cirrus cloud level and from cloud chamber studies were shown to be quantitatively in agreement with the laboratory-derived lowest temperatures to which ultrapure water drops of a given…

A Wind Tunnel Study of the Effects of Turbulence on the Growth of Cloud Drops by Collision and Coalescence

A set of wind tunnel experiments was carried out to investigate the growth of single drops by collision coalescence with small droplets in laminar and turbulent flow. Analysis of the experiments shows that under otherwise similar conditions, there exists a tendency toward a faster drop growth under turbulence. The observed growth under laminar conditions agrees well with computed continuous growth of a collector drop using collision efficiencies reported in the literature.

Collision efficiencies empirically determined from laboratory investigations of collisional growth of small raindrops in a laminar flow field

In laboratory experiments at the vertical wind tunnel of the University of Mainz the collisional growth of drops with radii between 70 and 170 μm in radius were observed while the collector drop freely floated in a cloud of droplets with radii ranging from 1 to 7 μm. Previously existing tables with collision efficiency values were interpolated and completed in such a way that drop growth rates calculated with these collision efficiencies match with observed growth rates. These new tables provide collision efficiency values for a wide range of drop sizes and radius ratios p including those ranges where efficiency values missed so far. This is of high importance for small p-ratios where the c…

Theoretical Investigations of the Wet Deposition of Atmospheric Pollutants

A Theoretical Study of the Wet Removal of Atmospheric Pollutants. Part III: The Uptake, Redistribution, and Deposition of (NH4)2SO4Particles by a Convective Cloud Using a Two-Dimensional Cloud Dynamics Model

Abstract Our model for the scavenging of aerosol particles has been coupled with the two-dimensional form of the convective cloud model of Clark and Collaborators. The combined model was then used to simulate a convective warm cloud for the meteorological situation which existed at 1100 LST 12 July 1985 over Hawaii; assuming an aerosol size distribution of maritime number concentration and of mixed composition with (NH4)2SO4 as the soluble compound. A shallow model cloud developed 26 min after the onset of convection leading to moderate rain which began after 45 min and ended after 60 min. Various parameters which characterize the dynamics and micophysics of the cloud, as well as the scaven…