Characterization of nanometric-size fractions of flame-formed particulate

The adverse health effects of aerosol combustion-formed carbon pollutants, ranging from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) to solid soot (Ciajolo et al., 2009), are due both to particle size (the health impact could becomes even more important going down to the nanometric size range, (Kennedy, 2007, Kumfer et al. 2009) and to the aromatic species (polymer-like species and PAH) often strongly adsorbed on soot particles (Mathieu et al., 2007, Alfè et al., 2008). The complex chemical nature of nanometric particles is currently under study representing a fundamental step to understand their role in health impact and in soot formation process. In this work a novel analytical approach was used to characterize in detail the species adsorbed fraction on combustion-formed particulate by means of extraction with diverse solvents and further mass spectrometric and FT-IR spectroscopy analysis of the chemical functionalities of both soot and soot extract. Copyright © 2010 AIDIC servizi S.r.l.