Experimental and theoretical studies of water droplet surfaces in the presence of glycerol

Sammanfattning: Water aerosols affect the climate because they have an impact on the radiation balance and cloud formation. Water is present in all forms in the atmosphere (water, ice and steam), for example as rain and hail. Water aerosols play an important role in many biological and chemical processes in the atmosphere. The most common form of water in the atmosphere is water droplets or vapor which often come from oceans and lakes and these aerosols often contain organic compounds. It is therefore interesting to study if organic compounds, in this case glycerol, will reside on the surface or inside the water droplets. The investigations were performed by using theoretical studies, molecular dynamic simulations in GROMACS, and experimental investigations; X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy with a liquid jet. The experiments were performed at BESSY II, Berlin. The concentrations of glycerol were varied from 75:1; 8:1 to 4:1 (water: glycerol molecules). The results were that the experiments and simulations indicated that when theconcentration of glycerol increased the glycerol concentration at the surface of the waterdroplet increases until a monolayer of glycerol molecules was formed at the surface. When the monolayer was formed (or close to) less and less glycerol molecules were placed at thewater surface and more and more glycerol molecules were placed in the bulk of the waterdroplet.