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<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2025-2239</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Development of a Horizontal Cloud Condensation Nuclei Counter (HCCNC) to detect particle activation at temperatures below 4 &amp;deg;C and supersaturations below 0.05 %</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Sapkal</surname>
<given-names>Mayur Gajanan</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9199-0156</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Rösch</surname>
<given-names>Michael</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Kanji</surname>
<given-names>Zamin A.</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8610-3921</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Environmental System Sciences, ETH Zurich, 8092, Zürich, Switzerland</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>28</day>
<month>05</month>
<year>2025</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2025</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>28</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2025 Mayur Gajanan Sapkal et al.</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2025</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2239/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2239/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2239/egusphere-2025-2239.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2025/egusphere-2025-2239/egusphere-2025-2239.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Aerosol particles play a critical role as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) in the atmosphere. The capacity of aerosol particles to activate into cloud droplets is measured experimentally using CCN counters (CCNC). Recent findings suggest that the co-condensation effect of semi-volatiles can enhance aerosol particle growth and cloud droplet activation. Conventional CCNCs, such as the streamwise CCNC, heat particles as they transit the CCNC column and may inadvertently not capture the co-condensation effect leading to an underestimate in CCN concentrations. Additionally, streamwise CCNC struggle to achieve supersaturations below 0.13 %, limiting their applicability for studying hydrophilic particles like (NH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;)&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;SO&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; larger than 111 nm. To address these limitations, we developed the Horizontal Cloud Condensation Nuclei Counter (HCCNC), that can operate at temperatures below 4 &amp;deg;C and supersaturations below 0.05 %. This study presents the development of the HCCNC, providing a detailed technical description of its 3D geometry, computational fluid dynamics simulations and the key components that demonstrate its performance, showing accurate performance at low temperatures and SS which the widely used commercially available Droplet Measurement Technologies Inc.(DMT) CCNC cannot achieve. The main chamber parts were 3D metal printed from an aluminum alloy. Sampling and humidity generation followed the principle of the previously used continuous flow thermal gradient diffusion chambers. Particles were detected using a commercially available optical particle counter (OPC, MetOne Instruments, Inc., Model 804). The instrument&apos;s performance is validated by conducting laboratory tests using ammonium sulphate ((NH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;)&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;SO&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;) particles in the size range between 50 and 200 nm and for temperatures between 30 &amp;deg;C and 8 &amp;deg;C. Future work will focus on exploring the co-condensation effect on cloud droplet activation of levoglucosan and ammonium sulphate particles.</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="28"/></counts>
<funding-group>
<award-group id="gs1">
<funding-source>Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung</funding-source>
<award-id>197149</award-id>
</award-group>
</funding-group>
</article-meta>
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