On evaporation kinetics of multicomponent aerosols: Characteristic times and implications for volatility measurements.

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the evaporation of individual compounds from an aerosol in vapor-free conditions, demonstrating that the evaporation of mixture components is interconnected via the ratio of their characteristic times. These characteristic times are proportional to the square of the initial particle diameter and inversely proportional to the compound saturation vapor concentration (SVC). A single ordinary differential equation (ODE) can adequately describe the behavior of all mixture components. It is shown that the time needed to evaporate a specific compound fraction is primarily controlled by the compoun...  more

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the evaporation of individual compounds from an aerosol in vapor-free conditions, demonstrating that the evaporation of mixture components is interconnected via the ratio of their characteristic times. These characteristic times are proportional to the square of the initial particle diameter and inversely proportional to the compound saturation vapor concentration (SVC). A single ordinary differential equation (ODE) can adequately describe the behavior of all mixture components. It is shown that the time needed to evaporate a specific compound fraction is primarily controlled by the compound's characteristic time, with lesser influences from compound abundance in the mixture and the amount of less volatile material. Consequently, the relative abundance of individual compounds has a minor effect on evaporation. Compounds evaporate in the reverse order of their SVC, with the time required to evaporate 50\% of their original mass being roughly half of their characteristic time. The reduction in ODEs provides significant computational benefits. Additional simplifications are derived that further accelerate calculations by two orders of magnitude while maintaining accuracy. The theory can guide experimental design for aerosol volatility measurements and demonstrate that a unique volatility basis set (VBS) can be fit to experimental data if the number of observations equals at least the number of volatility bins minus one. However, assumptions regarding parameters used for VBS fitting can result in ambiguity in the derived VBS, making it essential to use the same parameters for modeling evaporation as those used to derive the VBS from experimental data.