Nucleation and Growth of Aerosol From a Continuously Reinforced Vapor

Abstract

In this paper the dynamic coupling of the vapor and aerosol phases in spatially uniform systems undergoing new particle formation and driven by a constant source of vapor is considered. In such a system, freshly nucleated particles are sites of rapid condensation, causing vapor depletion and the cessation of homogeneous nucleation. Modifications of classical nucleation theory to account for cluster scavenging by the aerosol are evaluated. Extensive numerical experiments show that cluster scavenging by aerosols generally has negligible effect on the resulting aerosol distribution and that, except for the very earliest stages of nucleation, condensation dominates over nucleation as the route of gas-to-particle formation even in initially particle-free systems. The total number and size of the resulting particles are shown to depend strongly on the source rate, vapor pressure, and surface tension.