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Concept
Aerosol
Summary
An aerosol is a suspension of fine solid particles or liquid droplets in air or another gas. Aerosols can be natural or anthropogenic. Examples of natural aerosols are fog or mist, dust, forest exudates, and geyser steam. Examples of anthropogenic aerosols include particulate air pollutants, mist from the discharge at hydroelectric dams, irrigation mist, perfume from atomizers, smoke, dust, steam from a kettle, sprayed pesticides, and medical treatments for respiratory illnesses. When a person inhales the contents of a vape pen or e-cigarette, they are inhaling an anthropogenic aerosol.
The liquid or solid particles in an aerosol have diameters typically less than 1 μm (larger particles with a significant settling speed make the mixture a suspension, but the distinction is not clear-cut). In general conversation, aerosol often refers to a dispensing system that delivers a consumer product from a can.
Diseases can spread by means of small droplets in the breath, sometimes called bioaerosols.
Aerosol is defined as a suspension system of solid or liquid particles in a gas. An aerosol includes both the particles and the suspending gas, which is usually air. Meteorologists usually refer them as particle matter - PM2.5 or PM10, depending on their size. Frederick G. Donnan presumably first used the term aerosol during World War I to describe an aero-solution, clouds of microscopic particles in air. This term developed analogously to the term hydrosol, a colloid system with water as the dispersed medium. Primary aerosols contain particles introduced directly into the gas; secondary aerosols form through gas-to-particle conversion.
Key aerosol groups include sulfates, organic carbon, black carbon, nitrates, mineral dust, and sea salt, they usually clump together to form a complex mixture. Various types of aerosol, classified according to physical form and how they were generated, include dust, fume, mist, smoke and fog.
There are several measures of aerosol concentration.
Official source
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