Objective
To allow the determination and evaluation of chemical mechanisms which are needed for transport and dispersion models.
An outdoor smog chamber is built in Valencia for studying mechanisms of photochemical processes which lead to oxidant formation, in particular, ozone, in the polluted air of most European regions and which also influence the oxidising capacity of the atmosphere on a global scale. The development of measures to effectively control the photo-oxidant formation necessarily depends on the provision of reliable mechanistic data which can be obtained from this smog chamber studies.
A dual chamber facility will be constructed; it will be used in a differential mode ensuring the kinetic analysis of specific chemical systems at ambient concentration levels of the reactants. Systems proposed to be studied in the presence of different NOX concentrations are: biogenic VOCs, aromatic VOCs, alternative fuel components, air polluted by a real emission source (automobile engine) and radical reactions important for tropospheric oxidation processes, the latter by direct measurements of HO2, RO2 and NO3 radicals.