ACPD Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions ACPD 1680-7375 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acpd-10-8595-2010 Particle size distributions from laboratory-scale biomass fires using fast response instruments Hosseini S. 1 Qi L. 1 Cocker D. 1 Weise D. 2 Miller A. 3 Shrivastava M. 1 4 Miller W. 1 Mahalingam S. 1 Princevac M. 1 Jung H. 1 University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, Forest Fire Laboratory, Riverside, CA, USA National Institutes for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), GA, USA Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA 06 04 2010 10 4 8595 8621 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/8595/2010/acpd-10-8595-2010.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/10/8595/2010/acpd-10-8595-2010.pdf

Particle size distribution from biomass combustion is an important parameter as it affects air quality, climate modelling and health effects. To date particle size distributions reported from prior studies vary not only due to difference in fuels but also difference in experimental conditions. This study aims to report characteristics of particle size distribution in a well controlled repeatable lab scale biomass fires for southwestern US fuels. The combustion facility at the USDA Forest Service's Fire Science Laboratory (FSL), Missoula, MT provided repeatable combustion and dilution environment ideal for particle size distribution study. For a variety of fuels tested the major mode of particle size distribution was in the range of 29 to 52 nm, which was attributable to dilution of the fresh smoke. Comparing volume size distribution from Fast Mobility Particle Sizer (FMPS) and Aerodynamic Particle Sizer (APS) measurements, ~30% of particle volume was attributable to the particles ranging from 0.5 to 10 &mu;m for PM<sub>10</sub>. Geometric mean diameter rapidly increased during flaming and gradually decreased during mixed and smoldering phase combustion. Most of fuels gave unimodal distribution during flaming phase and strong biomodal distribution during smoldering phase. The mode of combustion (flaming, mixed and smoldering) could be better distinguished using slopes in Modified Combustion Efficiency (MCE) vs. geometric mean diameter from each mode of combustion than only using MCE values.

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