The latest understanding of nuclear winter is reviewed. Considerable progress has been made in quantifying the production and injection of soot by large-scale fires, the regional and global atmospheric dispersion of the soot, and the resulting physical, environmental, and climatic perturbations. New information has been obtained from laboratory studies, field experiments, and numerical modeli...

In this study, we attempted to quantify light absorption by insoluble light-absorbing particles (ILAPs) such as black carbon (BC), organic carbon (OC) and iron oxides in snow using an optical method directly and compared the results with those obtained using optical and chemical analysis methods cooperatively in previous studies. The mass absorption coefficients (MACs) and absorption Ångström e...

Strong sorption of hydrophobic organic contaminants to soot or black carbon (BC) is an important environmental process limiting the bioremediation potential of contaminated soils and sediments. Reliable methods to predict BC sorption coefficients for organic contaminants are therefore required. A computer simulation based on molecular mechanics using force field methods has been applied in this...

This paper examines the microstructures and nanostructures for natural (mined) chrysotile asbestos nanotubes (Mg3 Si2O5 (OH)4) in comparison with commercial multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), utilizing scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM). Black carbon (BC) and a variety of specific soot particulate (aggregate) microstructures and nanostructures are also examined compar...

[1] Aircraft-based measurements of aerosol composition, either bulk or single-particle, and both subsaturated and supersaturated hygroscopicity were made in the Los Angeles Basin and its outflows during May 2010 during the CalNex field study. Aerosol composition evolves from source-rich areas in the western Basin to downwind sites in the eastern Basin, evidenced by transition from an external t...

Fire-derived, pyrogenic carbon (PyC), sometimes called black carbon (BC), is the carbonaceous solid residue of biomass and fossil fuel combustion, such as char and soot. PyC is ubiquitous in the environment due to its long persistence, and its abundance might even increase with the projected increase in global wildfire activity and the continued burning of fossil fuel. PyC is also increasingly ...

[1] Radiative transfer modeling of the reduction of snow albedo by black carbon (BC) requires experimental verification. In natural snow the albedo reduction is at most a few percent, and even with accurate measurements, attribution is ambiguous because snow albedo depends on other variables. In this experiment, artificial snowpacks are made by freezing of water droplets produced by a snowmakin...

We use the superposition T-matrix method to compute the scattering matrix elements and optical cross-sections for a variety of complex soot and soot-containing aggregate particles in random orientation at a visible wavelength 0.628 mm. It is shown that random variations in the geometrical configuration of monomers in a soot cluster for fixed fractal dimension and prefactor, monomer size, and nu...

In this study, the microstructure and oxidation behaviour of soot from the raw exhaust of a Euro IV test heavy duty (HD) diesel engine is investigated and compared to that of spark discharge soot and hexabenzocoronene (HBC, C42H18). We find a microstructure-controlled reactivity toward oxidation of all three samples in 5% O2 in N2. The spark discharge soot with its fine primary particles and fu...

Tests of ultra-low sulfur diesel blended with soy-biodiesel at 5% and 20% were conducted using a 2002 model year Cummins ISB engine (with exhaust gas recirculation) that had been retrofitted with a passively regenerated catalyzed diesel particulate filter (DPF). Results show that on average, the DPF balance point temperature (BPT) is 45°C and 112°C lower for B20 blends and neat biodiesel, respe...