Chemistry of Small Organic Molecules on Snow Grains: The Applicability of Artificial Snow for Environmental Studies

The utilization of artificial snow for environmentally relevant (photo)chemical studies was systematically investigated. Contaminated snow samples were prepared by various methods: by shock freezing of the aqueous solutions sprayed into liquid nitrogen or inside a large walk-in cold chamber at −35 °C, or by adsorption of gaseous contaminants on the surface of artificially prepared pure or natural urban snow. The specific surface area of artificial snow grains produced in liquid nitrogen was determined using valerophenone photochemistry (400−440 cm² g⁻¹) to estimate the surface coverage by small hydrophobic organic contaminants. The dynamics of recombination/dissociation (cage effect) of benzyl radical pairs, photochemically produced from 4-methyldibenzyl ketone on the snow surface, was investigated. The initial ketone loading, c = 10⁻⁶−10⁻⁸ mol kg⁻¹, only about 1−2 orders of magnitude higher than the contaminant concentrations commonly found in nature, was already well below monolayer coverage. We found that the efficiency of out-of-cage reactions decreased at much higher temperatures than those previously determined for frozen solutions; however, the cage effect was essentially the same no matter what technique of snow production or ketone deposition/uptake was used, including the experiments with collected natural snow. The experimental observation that the contaminant molecules are initially self-associated even at the lowest concentrations was supported by DFT calculations. We conclude that, contrary to frozen aqueous solutions, in which the impurities reside in a 3D cage (micropocket), contaminant molecules located on the artificial snow grain surface at low concentrations can be visualized in terms of a 2D cage. Artificial snow thus represents a readily available study matrix that can be used to emulate the natural chemical processes of trace contaminants occurring in natural snow.