Workshop on Evolutions in Urban Chemistry: Growing Influence of Non-Traditional Emission Sources Workshop; Boulder, Colorado; Fall of 2018

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This project supports a workshop, "Evolutions in Urban Chemistry: Growing Influence of Non-Traditional Emissions Sources" to be held in Boulder, Colorado for two days in the Fall of 2018. The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts to advance scientific understanding of air pollutant emissions from "non-traditional" man-made sources including cooking, building exhaust, and volatile chemical products (VCPs), such as personal care products. This workshop will bring together experts to develop a roadmap for future research to advance the fundamental understanding of chemical species emitted from these non-traditional sources, how these emissions change chemically over time in the atmosphere, and the effects they have on the urban air pollution mixture. Historically, urban atmospheric chemistry has been driven by emissions from "traditional" anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) resulting from transportation and energy production. However, in recent years, as emissions from vehicles have decreased, other sources of VOCs have begun to play a significant role in the urban air pollution mixture. These non-traditional anthropogenic emissions include petroleum based VCPs, cooking emissions, and building exhaust, which often contain functional groups like alcohols, aldehydes, esters, and ketones. In contrast, the traditional anthropogenic VOC emissions are composed of species such as alkanes, alkenes, and aromatics. As a result, a different set of chemical reactions may be important. Workshop discussions will focus on the following areas: 1) laboratory studies of the transformations of oxygenated VOCs from VCPs either in chambers or aqueous solution; 2) field work to characterize emissions and chemical transitions of VCPs in the urban atmosphere; 3) modeling of VCP emissions and their chemical transformations impacting ozone and aerosol concentrations; and 4) development of instrumentation to accurately measure these species and their reaction products at concentrations found in the urban atmosphere. A report synthesizing the discussion will be produced and available broadly.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.