Why aerosols?

Aerosols are multi-phase systems of solid and/or liquid particles suspended in gas (e.g. air) ranging in particle size from 1 nm to 100 μm.

Aerosols can adversely affect the climate, environment and human health, or they may be engineered for our benefit. Aerosol formation, growth and transport mechanisms are critical to processes such as:

  • air pollution formation (e.g. particulate matter from combustion)
  • cloud formation (e.g. atmospheric aerosols)
  • delivery of medicine/drugs in vaporizers (e.g. electronic cigarettes)
  • disease transmission (e.g. airborne pathogens)
  • gas-phase production of nanomaterials (e.g. catalysts and catalyst supports)
  • aerosol instrumentation
Due to the complexity of the problem, models nearly always neglect the significant three-dimensional effects, and almost never adequately predict aerosol size distributions. Predicting rates of new particle formation and the growth of aerosol size distributions is critical to mitigating undesirable aerosols as well as aiding in the engineering design and use of desirable aerosols.