AbstractA compact and commercial aerosol generator capable of generating narrowly size‐distributed aerosols with high mass concentrations was designed, fabricated and tested. The aerosol generator, consisting of a Delavan simplex nozzle (Model 30610‐4), an L‐shaped settling chamber and a virtual impactor with a clean air core, was modified and improved fromCheinandLundgren's work [20] to be more compact and readily commercial. The performance of the aerosol generator was evaluated using corn‐oil, sodium chloride and uranine solutions. The results indicated that the cornoil droplets produced by the generator had a mass medium aerodynamic diameter (MMAD) of 7.20 ± 0.32 μm with a geometric standard deviation (GSD) of 1.48 ± 0.01 and the aerosol generation rate was 13.8 ± 1.3 mg/min. Solid aerosols generated from NaCl solution were found to have an MMAD in the range 1.39–4.88 μm with a GSD of 1.34–1.47 with the volumetric solution concentration varying from 0.1% to 9%. At the same time, the aerosol generation rate varied from 0.27 ± 0.05 to 15.8 ± 1.8 mg/min. depending on the solution concentration and the particle size produced. In addition, a 0.01% uraniane solution was tested to generate a submicron aerosol with an MMAD of 0.93 μ