The automatic generation of reduced mechanisms for tropospheric chemistry modelling

An automatic hydrocarbon oxidation system that uses structure activity relationships to automatically calculate how aliphatic hydrocarbons breakdown in the atmosphere is described. The program includes functions to calculate average reaction rates and products for use in a reduced mechanism based on functional groups. Chemical concentrations from the reduced mechanism compare well with results from the regional atmospheric chemistry mechanism, RACM, for clean and polluted boundary layer scenarios. The main advantage of this approach is the ease of generating different reduced mechanisms for different emissions scenarios, such as for different countries, or to take account of reductions in the emissions of particular VOCs.