Issue 9, 2009
From the journal:

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics

Photoreactivity of NO2 on mineral dusts originating from different locations of the Sahara desert

Marième Ndour,abc   Mélanie Nicolas,ab   Barbara D’Anna,ab   Oumar Kac  and  Christian George*ab  

* Corresponding authors

a Université de Lyon, Lyon, France

b CNRS, UMR5256, IRCELYON, Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse et l’Environnement de Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

c Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Faculté des Sciences et Techniques, Dakar, Sénégal

Abstract

The heterogeneous reaction of NO2 on Saharan sand collected from different locations has been studied at 298 K and 25% relative humidity using a horizontal coated-wall flow tube. The sand samples originated from Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and were taken as simplified proxies for mineral dust. While the uptake in the dark was always very small, a photo-enhanced uptake of NO2 was observed on all four samples showing that natural minerals do have a photochemical activity. The uptake coefficient γBET was measured for all sands. In the dark, the γBET values are (1.60 ± 0.24) × 10−8, (0.43 ± 0.06) × 10−8, (0.94 ± 0.14) × 10−8 and (0.59 ± 0.09) × 10−8 for the samples from Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, respectively. Under realistic atmospheric conditions, the observed photo-enhancement leads to uptake coefficients of (1.46 ± 0.21) × 10−7, (0.35 + 0.05) × 10−7, (1.30 ± 0.19) × 10−7 and (0.89 ± 0.13) × 10−7, respectively, i.e. an enhancement factor ranging from 8 to 15. This study shows that the photochemistry of natural minerals will impact significantly on the heterogeneous chemistry of NO2.

Graphical abstract: Photoreactivity of NO2 on mineral dusts originating from different locations of the Sahara desert

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Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/B806441E
Article type
Paper
Submitted
16 Apr 2008
Accepted
17 Nov 2008
First published
13 Jan 2009

Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2009,11, 1312-1319

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Photoreactivity of NO2 on mineral dusts originating from different locations of the Sahara desert

M. Ndour, M. Nicolas, B. D’Anna, O. Ka and C. George, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2009, 11, 1312 DOI: 10.1039/B806441E

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