News: Announcement of EC/OC Workshop
and ASN Contribution

Presentation

The discussion of the ASN formation took place at the ASEFI 2006 Workshop (Atmospheric Soot: Environmental Fate and Impact 2006) during the Special Session “Atmospheric Soot Network” that occurred in Arcachon (France) in October 2006 (18-20).
ASEFI 2006 Workshop organizers recommended the organization of the Atmospheric Soot Network (ASN) whose participants would be researchers with experience in soot emissions, atmospheric measurements, laboratory studies, and other of soot-related atmospheric processes.

WHAT ARE THE NEEDS?

“Natural” reasons, such as a great variety of different sources and physico-chemical properties of original combustion soots,
“artificial” reasons, namely a limit in in-situ observations of soot-initiated processes at microscopic level in the atmosphere, expensive and time-consuming emission experiments, also no single laboratory has all measurement techniques available for full characterization of soot,
“methodological reason” coming from a large variety of laboratory-made soots with different characteristics used for atmospheric studies all limit our current ability to predict environmental effects of soot exhausts. The common tool to have some real progress in the prediction of soot impact upon atmosphere is strongly needed.

 

ASN MISSION:

The mission of the ASN is to promote and coordinate activities that contribute to an improvement in the understanding of how soot impacts the environment.

The ASN will accomplish this mission by:
• promoting links between the soot generating industries and the research community to develop a common approach for the characterization of soot exhaust,
• maintaining a data base of literature on soot related studies that are linked to environmental impact,
• organizing inter-laboratory studies that use soot reference materials to compare measurement techniques and develop complementary methods for soot characterization,
• planning and conducting workshops that address soot/environment related issues,
• facilitating the collaboration of research groups for planning soot related field projects,
• coordinating the development of a comprehensive data base of soot reference materials,
• functioning as the interface to the climate-modelling community with respect to soot-related atmospheric research and how results from these research can be linked to climate change and other environmental processes that are important for climate modeling.

 

link to the EUROSOOT Programme

General Aspects of ASN.

The ASN can serve as an organization that can promote and coordinate a variety of activities that improve our capacity to understand the impact of soot on the environment. ASN joins soot specialists from the experienced laboratories which together create the “Tool for Soot Atmospheric Studies”. This Tool should establish a big progress in elaboration of the common projects concerning the studies of original soot emission, soot behavior in atmospheric systems, and soot impact upon atmosphere, especially in the situation of the limit of possibilities to organize the field observations and in-situ simulations.
The following are some of the activities that could be incorporated into the ASN.

Collaborative Research Projects.

The ASN, as a centralized resource for sharing information, would provide a forum for researchers with mutual interests to exchange ideas and information. One of the purposes of such exchanges would be to initiate research projects that could be informal, i.e. lacking detailed proposals to funding agencies but of benefit to the soot research community and those who use information on soot, or formal, whereby several institutes would write proposals to government or private agencies seeking financial support for studies related to soot.
As examples of possible informal projects, that could also be developed into more formal ones:
- measurement methodology intercomparisons (Round-Robin Tests)
- laboratory and reference soot intercomparisons (Round-Robin Tests)
- A network of international sites where soot properties are being measured on a continuing basis. These can be urban or rural sites and the measurements would be used to build a database of soot characteristics for evaluating trends in visibility, health, etc.
- Assessing soot lifetime in the troposphere by deriving rates of deposition, wet and dry. This could utilize existing precipitation chemistry stations, i.e. those that are currently used to evaluate wet deposition of inorganic ions and acid rain. These same samples could be evaluated in laboratories that do soot research in order to assess soot concentrations in precipitation
- The impact of soot on glaciers and snow
- Composition of engine – derived and flame soots: elaboration of laboratory surrogates
- Preliminary tests of particle emissions (soot) from solid fuels / coal, biomass

Exchange of scientific and technical personals.

There are many small-grant programs within the EU, UNEP, etc., that fund short-term visits of researchers. The ASN could serve as a central contact point whereby such programs could be identified and described as they related to soot research projects or researchers with positions open at their institutes for visiting scientists. It would not be the responsibility for ASN to fund these types of visits. One possibility, however, would be for private companies to fund such visits as “fellowships”. This is also commonly done by industry. ASN could have a “bulletin board” of such opportunities and could facilitate the development of such fellowships by promoting the benefits to industry of such financial support.

Coordinated Soot Database information.

The soot database takes a number of different forms. One data base would be a well organized list of references sorted by the different topics associated with soot, i.e. its environmental impact, measurement techniques and laboratory studies. The second type of data base would be an archive and graphical display of things like global soot inventories, soot measurements globally compiled from the literature and presented in a number of types of formats, e.g. tables, isopleths, all cross linked so that researchers and policy makers can access and the data in various ways. This data base could be used by modelers, health researchers, etc. This would be an effort requiring funding to compile and maintain it.

Centralized facilities.

This could be a central calibration laboratory for atmospheric measurement equipment, a central laboratory to produce “tailored” soot surrogates or other facilities that have specialized equipment that is not in continuous use by a specific institute but that is needed for a certain specialization.
ASN OBJECTIVES:
- to build a link between engine makers, field observers, laboratory researcher and climate modelers, to elaborate the common approach for characterization of soot exhaust from engine and laboratory combustion sources;
- to elaborate the common basis for studies of soot-related atmospheric processes and to increase the common ability to use complementary techniques;
- to produce common laboratory soot for atmospheric studies, to elaborate, test and recommend Reference Soot Materials;
- to organize inter-laboratory comparisons to increase soot quality measurements in the atmosphere and progress in laboratory studies;
- to develop cooperative projects in the field of global changing and air quality,
- to remove the lack in the knowledge of physico-chemical properties of soot particles generated by industrial and residential emissions, vehicular and aircraft emission, domestic home heating, and biomass burning;
- to predict the lifetime of soot particles as well as their fate in either an atmospheric or biological context;
- to develop a comprehensive Soot Database of laboratory - characterized soots of natural and anthropogenic sources.

Advantages of ASN.
• A key advantage of the Atmospheric Soot Network is a strong connection of techniques, methodic and technologies for laboratory/field characterization of engine particulate emission and its environment and human impacts;
• The elaborated common laboratory approach in the case of limited in-situ observations;
• The enhancement of understanding in the earth climate system with respect to soot/cloud/climate interactions;
• The basis approach for general environment international projects

ASN Steering Committee:

• Baumgartner Darrel (Center of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Mexico, Mexico)
• Focsa Christian (PhLam, CNRS, University of Lille, France)
• Gierens Klaus (Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre, DLR, Germany)
• Madden Paul (Rolls-Royce, England)
• Miake-Lye Richard (Aerodyne Research, USA)
• Niessner Reinhard (Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Munich, Germany)
• Popovicheva Olga (Institut of nuclear Physic, Moscow State University, Russia)
• Puxbaum Hans (Institute of Chemical Technologies and Analytics, TU-Wien, Austria)
• Rossi Michel (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Villenave Eric (Intitut of Molecular Science - CNRS, University of Bordeaux 1)

 

Organization structure.

Participants of ASN: preliminary! List is elaborating…..

University of Bordeaux 1 - CNRS, ISM (France)
Moscow State University, INP, (Russia)
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, (Mexico)
ICTA, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, (Austria)
LPAS, Lausanne (Switzerland)
Technical University of Munich, Munich, (Germany)
DLR, Oberpfaffenhofen, (Germany)
Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica MA, (USA)
CRMC-N/CNRS, Marseille (France)
University of Lille 1 - CNRS, PC2A, PhLam(France)
CNRS, Orleans (France)
ONERA, Paris (France)
IMK, Karlsruhe (Germany)

 

Participants of ASN.

Participants of the ASN are the laboratories having the experience in the soot production and characterization, in laboratory and field measurements, in soot modeling. They are assumed to use the laboratory and field measurement techniques and methodic which are highly complemented each other, the most effective and needed for common Reference Soot and laboratory surrogates production, soot emission and atmospheric soot studies. All results obtained and samples elaborated will be widely distributed between ASN participants, as well as the final products will be first tested and used in ASN laboratories.
Members of ASN:
• who is working with engines, transport and energetic facilities exhausts: who use soot sources and may produce original soot subjects using the combustion facilities,
• who is interested in characterization of soot emission into atmosphere in relation to design of engines, fuel composition and fuel consumption,
• who is characterizing the physico-chemical properties of soot exhausts,
• who is examining the natural and antropogenic soot exhaust in respect to environmental impact: specific properties, interaction with water and reactive gases, ice nucleation, contrail and cirrus formation, radiative properties, chemical balance of atmosphere, and human health,
•who is analyzing the soot- related processes in atmosphere such as soot aging, hydration, activation, nucleation, contrail-cirrus transformation, heterogeneous freezing,
• who is assuming to make the estimations of soot exhaust impact on climate and air quality,
•who is interested to deliver the ASN results to transport and climate models leading to removing the basis uncertainties connected with soot aerosols processes in the atmosphere.

Ongoing ASN activity (January 2007).

1. Organization of the Workshop “Atmospheric Soot: Environment Fate and Impact” (18-20 October, 2006, Arcachon, France), discussion of the necessarily of the ASN organization,

2. ASEFI Workshop Report and its publication (EGU 2007),

3. Creation of organization structure: list of ASN members,

4. Writing of ASN documents for ASN website; creation of the ASN site,

5. Elaboration of ASN Working Programme –Draft,

6. Creation of a Laboratory and Reference Soot Committee and its WP,

7. First step activity ….

8. List of unresolved soot problems.

Miscellaneous:

• Asefi 2006 Worshop Report,

• EGU 2007:
  " ASN: The Atmospheric Soot Network (ASN): a resource for atmospheric modelers and experimentalists alike."
  " ASN presentation poster "
  
  
  
• The EGGS, issue 18, 04 Feb 2007:
  "ASEFI Meeting proposal of Atmospheric Soot Network."
  
  
  
  List of Publications by Authors:

  Dr M. Rossi.