Charging of polydispersed aerosol particles by attachment of atmospheric ions

The charge distribution on polydispersed aerosol particles was obtained by a simultaneous solution of the ion-aerosol balance equations for a finite range of aerosol sizes. Results show that a larger depletion in the free negative ion concentration occurred early in the charging process due to the larger values of the attachment coefficients of negative ions to aerosols. It was found that for small aerosol concentrations, particles were charged mostly negatively, but that an increase in aerosol concentrations leads to differential charging, resulting in opposite charging of the small (mostly negative) and the large (mostly positive) particles. -from Authors