A Study of Nanoparticle Aerosol Charging by Monte Carlo Simulations

A Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) technique is applied for describing the dynamics of aerosol charging. The method is based on the transformation of known combination coefficients into charging probabilities. Changes in the particle charge distribution are computed as a stochastic game, calculating the time-step after each event. The simulations are validated by comparison with analytical solutions for unipolar aerosol diffusion charging and aerosol photocharging. The advantage of the DSMC method lies in the uncomplicated simulation of multi-dimensional systems that would result in very elaborate population balances. The DSMC method is used for simulation of the photocharging of moderately concentrated bicomponent polydisperse aerosols. By means of this method, the influence of the particle parameters (size, material) on the dynamics of the charge distribution in different size and material fractions has been studied. It is shown that charge separation between size or material fractions can be achieved for aerosol components with dissimilar work functions, while the total aerosol charge is zero.