[Characterization of photochemical smog chamber and initial experiments].

A self-made new indoor environmental chamber facility for the study of atmospheric processes leading to the formation of ozone and secondary organic aerosols has been introduced and characterized. The characterization experiments include the measurements of wall effects for reactive species and the determination of chamber dependent * OH radical sources by CO-NO(x) irradiation experiments. Preliminary ethene-NO(x) and benzene-NO(x) experiments were conducted as well. The results of characterization experiments show that the wall effects for O3 and NO2 in a new reactor are not obvious. Relative humidity has a great effect on the wall losses in the old reactor, especially for O3. In the old reactor, the rate constant for O3 wall losses is obtained to be 1.0 x 10(-5) s(-1) (RH = 5%) and 4.0 x10(-5) s(-1) (RH = 91%), whereas for NO2, it is 1.0 x 10(-6) s(-1) (RH = 5%) and 0.6 x 10(-6) s(-1) (RH = 75%). The value for k(NO2 --> HONO) determined by CO-NO(x) irradiation experiments is (4.2-5.2) x 10(-5) s(-1) and (2.3-2.5) x 10(-5) s(-1) at RH = 5% and RH 75% -77%, respectively. The average *OH concentration is estimated to be (2.1 +/- 0.4) x 10(6) molecules/cm3 by using a reaction rate coefficient of CO and * OH. The sensitivity of chamber dependent auxiliary reactions to the O3 formation is discussed. Results show that NO2 --> HONO has the greatest impact on the O3 formation during the initial stage, N2O5 + H2O --> 2HNO3 has a minus effect to maximum O3 concentration, and that the wall losses of both O3 and NO2 have little impact on the O3 formation. The results from the ethene-NO(x) and benzene-NO(x) experiments are in good agreement with those from the MCM simulation, which reflects that the facility for the study of the formation of secondary pollution of ozone and secondary organic aerosols is reliable. This demonstrates that our facility can be further used in the deep-going study of chemical processes in the atmosphere.