Publications by authors named "Joseph R Roscioli"

The Transport and Transformation of Ammonia (TRANSAm) airborne field campaign occurred over northeastern Colorado during the summers of 2021 and 2022. A subset of the TRANSAm flights investigated easterly wind conditions capable of moving agricultural emissions of ammonia (NH) through urban areas and into the Rocky Mountains. TRANSAm captured 6 of these events, unveiling important commonalities.

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Article Synopsis
  • Ethylene oxide (EtO) is a volatile organic compound and carcinogen, with limited reliable data on its ambient concentrations near production facilities, raising exposure concerns.
  • In February 2023, sensitive mobile measurements in southeastern Louisiana showed that 75% of sampled areas had EtO levels above the threshold associated with a 1-in-a-million cancer risk, with some locations exceeding levels indicating a 1-in-1,000 risk.
  • This study revealed higher EtO concentrations than previous EPA estimates and highlights the need for improved monitoring methods to assess exposure risks in industrial areas.
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ConspectusWe often teach or are taught in our freshman courses that there are three phases of matter─gas, liquid and solid─where the ordering reflects increasing complexity and strength of interaction between the molecular constituents. But arguably there is also a fascinating additional "phase" of matter associated with the microscopically thin interface (<10 molecules thick) the gas and liquid, which is still poorly understood and yet plays a crucial role in fields ranging from chemistry of the marine boundary layer and atmospheric chemistry of aerosols to the passage of O and CO through alveolar sacs in our lungs. The work in this Account provides insights into three challenging new directions for the field, each embracing a rovibronically quantum-state-resolved perspective.

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Soil microbes vigorously produce and consume gases that reflect active soil biogeochemical processes. Soil gas measurements are therefore a powerful tool to monitor microbial activity. Yet, the majority of soil gases lack non-disruptive subsurface measurement methods at spatiotemporal scales relevant to microbial processes and soil structure.

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Oxidation of organic compounds in the atmosphere produces an immensely complex mixture of product species, posing a challenge for both their measurement in laboratory studies and their inclusion in air quality and climate models. Mass spectrometry techniques can measure thousands of these species, giving insight into these chemical processes, but the datasets themselves are highly complex. Data reduction techniques that group compounds in a chemically and kinetically meaningful way provide a route to simplify the chemistry of these systems but have not been systematically investigated.

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Spatially resolved emission inventories were used with an atmospheric dispersion model to predict ambient concentrations of methane, ethane, and propane in the Eagle Ford oil and gas production region in south central Texas; predicted concentrations were compared to ground level observations. Using a base case inventory, predicted median propane/ethane concentration ratios were 106% higher (95% CI: 83% higher-226% higher) than observations, while median ethane/methane concentration ratios were 112% higher (95% CI: 17% higher-228% higher) than observations. Predicted median propane and ethane concentrations were factors of 6.

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Aromatic hydrocarbons make up a large fraction of anthropogenic volatile organic compounds and contribute significantly to the production of tropospheric ozone and secondary organic aerosol (SOA). Four toluene and four 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene (1,2,4-TMB) photooxidation experiments were performed in an environmental chamber under relevant polluted conditions (NO ~ 10ppb). An extensive suite of instrumentation including two proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometers (PTR-MS) and two chemical ionisation mass spectrometers ( CIMS and I CIMS) allowed for quantification of reactive carbon in multiple generations of hydroxyl radical (OH)-initiated oxidation.

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Managing leaks in urban natural gas (NG) distribution systems is important for reducing methane emissions and costly waste. Mobile surveying technologies have emerged as a new tool for monitoring system integrity, but this new technology has not yet been widely adopted. Here, we establish the efficacy of mobile methane surveys for managing local NG distribution systems by evaluating their ability to detect and locate NG leaks and quantify their emissions.

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Unlabelled: Cold heavy oil production with sands (CHOPS) is a common oil extraction method in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan that can result in significant methane emissions due to annular venting. Little is known about the magnitude of these emissions, nor their contributions to the regional methane budget. Here the authors present the results of field measurements of methane emissions from CHOPS wells and compare them with self-reported venting rates.

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The evolution of atmospheric organic carbon as it undergoes oxidation has a controlling influence on concentrations of key atmospheric species, including particulate matter, ozone and oxidants. However, full characterization of organic carbon over hours to days of atmospheric processing has been stymied by its extreme chemical complexity. Here we study the multigenerational oxidation of α-pinene in the laboratory, characterizing products with several state-of-the-art analytical techniques.

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This paper describes process-based estimation of CH4 emissions from sources in Indianapolis, IN and compares these with atmospheric inferences of whole city emissions. Emissions from the natural gas distribution system were estimated from measurements at metering and regulating stations and from pipeline leaks. Tracer methods and inverse plume modeling were used to estimate emissions from the major landfill and wastewater treatment plant.

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The Aerodyne Mobile Laboratory was deployed to the Houston Ship Channel and surrounding areas during the Benzene and Other Toxics Exposure field study in February 2015. We evaluated atmospheric concentrations of volatile organic hydrocarbons and other hazardous air pollutants of importance to human health, including benzene, 1,3-butadiene, toluene, xylenes, ethylbenzenes, styrene, and NO2. Ambient concentration measurements were focused on the neighborhoods of Manchester, Harrisburg, and Galena Park.

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New facility-level methane (CH4) emissions measurements obtained from 114 natural gas gathering facilities and 16 processing plants in 13 U.S. states were combined with facility counts obtained from state and national databases in a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate CH4 emissions from U.

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Facility-level methane emissions were measured at 114 gathering facilities and 16 processing plants in the United States natural gas system. At gathering facilities, the measured methane emission rates ranged from 0.7 to 700 kg per hour (kg/h) (0.

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Equipment- and site-level methane emissions from 45 compressor stations in the transmission and storage (T&S) sector of the US natural gas system were measured, including 25 sites required to report under the EPA greenhouse gas reporting program (GHGRP). Direct measurements of fugitive and vented sources were combined with AP-42-based exhaust emission factors (for operating reciprocating engines and turbines) to produce a study onsite estimate. Site-level methane emissions were also concurrently measured with downwind-tracer-flux techniques.

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Methane is an important greenhouse gas and tropospheric ozone precursor. Simultaneous observation of ethane with methane can help identify specific methane source types. Aerodyne Ethane-Mini spectrometers, employing recently available mid-infrared distributed feedback tunable diode lasers (DFB-TDL), provide 1 s ethane measurements with sub-ppb precision.

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We present results on state-resolved scattering studies for seeded CO(2) supersonically cooled molecular beams (E(inc) = 61.9(40) kJ/mol) from a series of room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs). These RTILs are composed of C(n)-methylimidazolium cations with BF(4)(-) or Tf(2)N(-) counteranions.

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Jet cooled NO molecules are scattered at 45° with respect to the surface normal from a liquid gallium surface at E(inc) from 1.0(3) to 20(6) kcal/mol to probe rotationally and electronically inelastic scattering from a gas-molten metal interface (numbers in parenthesis represent 1σ uncertainty in the corresponding final digits). Scattered populations are detected at 45° by confocal laser induced fluorescence (LIF) on the γ(0-0) and γ(1-1) A(2)Σ ← X(2)Π(Ω) bands, yielding rotational, spin-orbit, and λ-doublet population distributions.

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The dynamics of HCI scattering from a room-temperature -CH3 terminated self-assembled monolayer (SAM) is probed via state-resolved spectroscopy coupled to a velocity-map imaging (VMI) apparatus. The resulting velocity maps provide new insight into the HCl scattering trajectories, revealing for the first time correlations between internal and translational degrees of freedom. Velocity maps at low J are dominated by signatures of both the incident beam (17.

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Rotationally resolved fluorescence excitation spectra of the S(1)<--S(0) origin band transitions of two conformers of 1,2,3,6,7,8-hexahydropyrene (HHP) have been recorded in the gas phase. The band at 30,648.0 cm(-1) has been assigned as the origin band of the chair conformer and the band at 30,658.

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Vibrational predissociation spectra of the argon-tagged halide monohydrates, X(-) .H(2)O.Ar (X = Cl, Br, or I), are recorded from approximately 800 to 3800 cm(-1) by monitoring the loss of the argon atom.

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Vibrational predissociation spectra are reported for the cationic acetylene clusters, (C(2)H(2))(n) (+), n=1-6, in the region of the C-H stretching fundamentals. For n=1 and 2, predissociation could only be observed for the Ar-tagged clusters. These were prepared by charge-transfer collisions of Ar(k) (+) with C(2)H(2) to create C(2)H(2) (+)Ar(m) clusters, which were then converted into larger members of the (C(2)H(2))(n) (+)Ar series by sequential addition of acetylene molecules.

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We demonstrate a method for isolating the vibrational predissociation spectra of different structural isomers of mass-selected cluster ions based on a population-labeling double resonance scheme. This involves a variation on the "ion dip" approach and is carried out with three stages of mass selection in order to separate the fragment ion signals arising from a fixed-frequency population-monitoring laser and those generated by a scanned laser that removes population of species resonant in the course of the scan. We demonstrate the method on the Ar-tagged NO(2) (-)H(2)O cluster, where we identify the spectral patterns arising from two isomers.

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Vibrational predissociation spectra of the F(-)(H(2)O) x Ar and F(-)(D(2)O) x Ar complexes are observed over a range of 600 to 3800 cm(-1), which include bands attributed to the fundamentals as well as the first two overtones of the vibrations primarily associated with the shared hydrogen. This information allows us to characterize both the extended potential surface confining the anionic H-bonded hydrogen and the degree to which this motion is coupled to the motions of other atoms in the complex. We analyze these new data with reduced dimensional treatments using explicit potential energy and electric dipole moment surfaces.

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