Aggregation of Impurities on Ice: Spectroscopic Laboratory Study

                                G. Ondrušková, J. Krausko, D. Heger

  RECETOX and Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kamenice 5, 625 00
                                       Brno, Czech Republic

                                        bicanovag@gmail.com


Anthropogenic as well as natural pollutants often accommodates in the cold regions in snow and ice.
Their (photo)-chemical transformations may have important environmental consequences which are not
yet fully understand. [1] Snow is a dynamic multiphase medium and changes in its structure affect
physical and chemical processes occurring there. We conduct laboratory experiments aimed to enhance
the understanding of the ice with impurities via absorption and fluorescence spectroscopies. The
obtained results show that at freezing the compounds originally dissolved in the solution are
concentrated between ice grains or form crystals at some conditions. [2] The freeze-concentration
is studied using the energy transfer and the excimers since they both are enhanced at high
concentrations on surface. [3]


[1] T. Bartels-Rausch, A review of air–ice chemical and physical interactions (AICI): liquids,
quasi-liquids, and solids in snow, Atmos. Chem. Phys. 2014, 14, p. 1587 - 1633

[2] N. Takenaka, Acceleration Mechanism of Chemical Reaction by Freezing: The Reaction of Nitrous
Acid with Dissolved Oxygen, J. Phys. Chem. 1996, 100, p. 13874-13884

[3] T. Yamanaka, Time-resolved fluorescence spectra of naphthalene doped in amorphous silica
glasses, CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS 1990, Volume 172, number 5, p. 405 – 408