Humidity effects on the detection of soluble and insoluble nanoparticles in butanol operated condensation particle counters

Abstract

In this study the impact of humidity on heterogeneous nucleation of n-butanol onto hygroscopic and nonabsorbent charged and neutral particles was investigated using a fast expansion chamber and commercial continuous flow type condensation particle counters (CPCs). More specifically, we measured the activation probability of sodium chloride (NaCl) and silver (Ag) nanoparticles by using n-butanol as condensing liquid with the size analyzing nuclei counter (SANC). In addition, the cutoff diameters of regular butanol-based CPCs for both seed materials under different charging states were measured and compared to SANC results. Our findings reveal a strong humidity dependence of NaCl particles in the sub-10 nm size range since the activation of sodium chloride seeds is enhanced with increasing relative humidity. In addition, negatively charged NaCl particles with a diameter below 3.5 nm reveal a charge-enhanced activation. For Ag seeds this humidity and charge dependence was not observed, underlining the importance of molecular interactions between seed and vapor molecules. Consequently, the cutoff diameter of a butanol-based CPC can be reduced significantly by increasing the relative humidity. This finding suggests that cutoff diameters of butanol CPCs under ambient conditions are likely smaller than corresponding cutoff diameters measured under clean (dry) laboratory conditions. At the same time, we caution that the humidity dependence may lead to wrong interpretations if the aerosol composition is not known.