Nitrous acid in the atmosphere and laboratory experiments on its photolysis

Intercomparison of Ambient Nitrous Acid Measurements in a Shanghai Urban Site

Nitrous acid (HONO) is the major source of OH radicals in polluted regions and plays a key role in the nitrogen cycle of the atmosphere. Therefore, accurate measurements of HONO in the atmosphere is important. Long Path Absorption Photometer (LOPAP) is a common and highly sensitive method used for ambient HONO measurements. Incoherent Broadband Cavity Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy (IBBCEAS) is a recent alternative for the detection of HONO with high temporal and spatial resolutions, which has shown a detection limit of 0.76 ppbv at a sampling average of 180 s. In this study, LOPAP and IBBCEAS-HONO instruments were deployed in a Shanghai Urban Site (Shanghai Academy of Environmental Sciences) and simultaneously recorded the data from both instruments for a quantitative intercomparison of the measured atmospheric HONO for four days from 30 December 2017–2 January 2018. The HONO concentration measured by IBBCEAS and LOPAP were well matched. The campaign average concentrations measured by IBBCEAS and LOPAP were 1.28 and 1.20 ppbv, respectively. The intercomparison results demonstrated that both the IBBCEAS-HONO instrument and LOPAP-HONO instrument are suitable for ambient monitoring of HONO in a polluted urban environment.

Quantum modeling of the reaction between ozone and hydrogen cyanide

This work consists of an investigation, using current methods of quantum chemistry and, at first, on the basis of the available experimental results, about the new mechanisms of the reaction between ozone and hydrogen cyanide (HCN) in gaseous phases. Three possible reaction pathways which we have determined as the most probable and, all three, leading exactly to the same products, are proposed here. For each of these pathways, several steps for which we performed a kinetic study were identified in the singlet potential energy surface. To confirm the proposed mechanisms, we have achieved a study including the intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC), the topological analysis of atoms in molecule and the harmonic vibrational frequencies calculations. The obtained results reveal that the final products have considerable thermodynamic stability and this reaction is exothermic in standard conditions.