Re-evaluation of the Pressure Effect for Nucleation in Laminar Flow Diffusion Chamber Experiments with Fluent and the Fine Particle Model

Abstract

This study is an investigation of the effect of total pressure on homogeneous nucleation rates of n-butanol in helium and n-pentanol in helium and argon in a laminar flow diffusion chamber (LFDC). To verify earlier findings, experimental data was re-evaluated using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT in combination with the fine particle model (FPM) for aerosol dynamics calculations. This approach has been introduced in an earlier paper [Herrmann, E.; Lihavainen, H.; Hyvarinen, A.-P.; Riipinen, I.; Wilck, M.; Stratmann, F.; Kulmala, M. J. Phys. Chem. A 2006, 110, 12448]. As a result of our evaluation, a flaw in the femtube2 code was found which had been used in the original data analysis [Hyvarinen, A.-P.; Brus, D.; Zdimal, V.; Smolik, J.; Kulmala, M.; Viisanen, Y.; Lihavainen, H. J. Chem. Phys. 2006, 124, 224304]. The FLUENT analysis yielded a weak positive pressure effect for the nucleation of n-butanol in helium at low nucleation temperatures (265-270 K). n-Pentanol in helium showed a positive pressure effect at all temperatures (265-290 K), while the effect for the nucleation of n-pentanol in argon was negative at high temperatures (280 and 285 K) and positive at lower nucleation temperatures (265 K). These findings support results gained with the corrected femtube2 model. In this study, we also carried out a detailed comparison of FLUENT and femtube2 modeling results, especially focusing on the calculation of temperature and saturation ratio at nucleation rate maximum (T(nuc) and S(nuc), respectively) in both models.