The SAPRC atmospheric chemical mechanism generation system (MechGen)
Name
gmd-18-8461-2025.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.21 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e16acdda982755faaac65f165deaf32f
Author(s)
Carter, William PL
Jiang, Jia
Wang, Zhizhao
Barsanti, Kelley C
Date Issued
November 13, 2025
Journal
Geoscientific Model Development
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
Citation
Carter, W. P. L., Jiang, J., Wang, Z., and Barsanti, K. C.: The SAPRC atmospheric chemical mechanism generation system (MechGen), Geosci. Model Dev., 18, 8461–8483.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
MechGen is a software system designed to derive gas-phase reaction mechanisms for reactive organic compounds under atmospherically relevant conditions for use in chemical models and for data analysis and interpretation. It has been used to derive versions of the SAPRC mechanisms used in airshed models, with SAPRC-22 being the most recent. MechGen derives fully explicit mechanisms for many types of organic compounds and their oxidation products when they react in the atmosphere in the presence of oxides of nitrogen and other pollutants and then uses these explicit mechanisms to derive reduced or lumped mechanisms more suitable for use in airshed models. This paper gives an overview of the system, describes the procedures it uses to generate explicit and reduced mechanisms, and presents several types of applications. The assignments and estimates used to derive individual chemical reactions and assign rate constants are discussed in a separate companion paper. The system is publicly accessible for generating explicit mechanisms for single compounds and viewing associated documentation using a web-based interface. A separate terminal login is available for deriving mechanisms for multiple compounds, multi-generation mechanisms, and portions of lumped mechanisms for airshed models, as well as for system programming and management. MechGen is designed to accommodate updates to the chemical estimates and assignments that it uses to reflect our evolving knowledge of and ability to estimate atmospheric reactions of organic compounds.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-18-8461-2025
