Estimation of the Volatility and Apparent Activity Coefficient of Levoglucosan in Wood-Burning Organic Aerosols

Biomass burning (BB) is a major source of aerosols and black carbon, thereby exerting an important impact on climate and air quality. Levoglucosan is the most well-recognized organic marker compound of BB and has been used to quantitatively assess BB’s contribution to ambient aerosols. However, little is known about levoglucosan’s evaporation under atmospheric conditions, primarily due to the uncertainty of its effective saturation vapor concentration (C*) and its unknown activity coefficient (γ), in the complex BB emission matrix. Here, we utilized a thermodenuder to investigate the evaporation of levoglucosan from mixtures with polyethylene glycol (PEG) or BB primary organic aerosol (BBPOA) matrices, respectively. We estimate a pure component log₁₀(C*/[μg m^–3]) of levoglucosan of 1.1 ± 0.1 at 298 K. We reveal that levoglucosan mixed with PEG or BBPOA becomes more volatile than when treated as a single component due to nonideal molecular interactions. Considering that phase separation might occur in such systems, we term γ apparent activity coefficient (γ_a). We estimate log₁₀C* and γ_a of levoglucosan in BBPOA of 1.8 ± 0.1 and 3.8 ± 0.3, assuming a liquid phase state. Consequently, γ_a must be considered to avoid significant underestimation of levoglucosan evaporation via gas–particle partitioning during transport.