On the Sizing Accuracy of Laser Optical Particle Counters

The performance of a narrow-angle and a wide-angle, forward scattering laser aerosol spectrometer has been studied as a function of particle size and refractive index. The results have been compared with theoretical calculations based on light scattering theory. The results indicate that for the narrow-angle instrument, the scattered-light intensity is not a monotonic function of particle size for transparent particles (a monotonic relationship is required for unambiguous particle size measurement) above 0.7 μm. The instrument is therefore limited in its useful range to size distribution measurement between 0.2 μm – its lower particle size limit – and 0.7 μm for transparent particles. In the case of the wide-angle instrument, the instrument output is a monotonic function of particle size for transparent particles, but the output is severely attenuated for light absorbing particles above 0.3 μm. The instrument, therefore, cannot be used for accurate size measurements above 0.3 μm for light absorbing particles.     

高速数字全息测量乙醇喷雾火焰中液滴三维位置、粒径及蒸发率

喷雾蒸发燃烧的研究对指导发动机燃烧系统设计具有重要意义。本文搭建了高速数字全息系统,在线测量乙醇喷雾火焰中液滴的粒径、三维位置、速度及蒸发率。对喷雾火焰中的液滴进行了统计分析,得到液滴粒径及三维空间分布。燃烧喷雾场液滴的平均粒径为68μm;非燃烧火焰测试区液滴数量多且较密集,燃烧火焰测试区液滴数量少且稀疏.追踪单液滴并处理得到湍流火焰中液滴的运动轨迹及速度。通过研究粒径的平方D2随停留时间ts的变化,测得液滴平均蒸发率为-3.343×10-7 m2/s.     

Multi-nozzle electrospray system for gas cleaning processes

A multi-nozzle electrospray system was developed as a charged droplet source for cleaning a gas contaminated with fine particles. The efficiency of removal of fine particles from the gas can be significantly increased, as compared to uncharged sprays, when the droplets are electrically charged. In the presented experiments, the spray of the droplets of size lower than 100 μm was charged either positively or negatively. Cigarette smoke was used as a source of submicrometer particles. The suppression of the particle concentration was determined after different time intervals of spraying of water. Further improvement in gas cleaning was obtained after charging the smoke particles using a specially designed corona charger. The efficiency of the cleaning process was similar to that obtained for droplets generated by mechanical atomisers with induction charging, but the electrospraying allowed decreasing the water consumption up to about three times.     

A Multi‐Thresholding Algorithm for Sizing out of Focus Particles

A methodology is presented that enables efficient acquisition of sufficient droplet information (e.g. diameter and aspect ratio) from images of in and out of focus droplets. The newly developed multi‐threshold algorithm is successfully implemented in the automatic particle/droplet image analysis (PDIA) system. Under the same optical hardware set‐up, and compared to the dual threshold methods [1], the multi‐threshold method increases the measurable/acceptable depth of field (DoF) of particles, especially for the small particles of diameters less than 50 μm (1098 pixels in this optical set‐up). When testing the 70 μm~110 μm and 100 μm~200 μm moving glass spheres, the dual threshold method can only detect 11%~29 % of the particles found by the multi‐threshold method. The multi‐threshold method is also capable of generating the aspect ratios of particles more accurately than dual threshold methods.     

基于机器视觉的细水雾液滴尺寸测量与分析

为了满足科研与工程中对细水雾液滴尺寸测量的高精度低成本要求,对雾滴尺寸的机器视觉测量方法进行了深入研究.在自行建立的高压喷雾系统与雾滴采集装置上对细水雾液滴进行了采样,用显微镜及其CCD相机对雾滴样本进行了图像采集,用图像处理软件对采集的雾滴图像进行了处理与分析,测量并统计了5966个雾滴,得到了雾滴尺寸的频谱分布和累积分布以及雾滴平均直径和特征直径,将测量结果与相位多普勒粒子分析仪(PDPA)的测量结果进行了比较.结果表明,机器视觉方法町测量的最小雾滴直径约4.39 μm;机器视觉测量结果与PDPA测最结果相当接近,两种方法测得的细水雾液滴平均直径和特征直径的相对误差均在5%以内,雾滴尺寸均匀度指数的相对误差为0.27%.     

Flow visualization and laser measurement on particle modulation to gas-phase turbulence

Particle modulation to turbulence is investigated experimentally by means of PDPA, PIV and flow visualization for a gas-particle two-phase jet flow. Large particles can enhance the small-scale vortex, so that gas-phase turbulence intensity is increased, while small particles may delay the rolling up of the gas vortex, so that gas-phase turbulence intensity is attenuated. The critical particle size range for such different effects is between 150 σm and 200 σm, corresponding to the Stokes number is between 88 and 157 under the present flow conditions. The PIV results show small particles can retain the gas-phase vortex structure, while large particles can break large vortex structure. The particle Stokes number is not the only judgment standard whether particles enhance or attenuate gas-phase turbulence. The CTI (Change of Turbulence Intensity) number can mark off particle modulation on turbulence in two-phase flow, but more studies are needed.     

Osmium tetroxide fixation of vinyl chloride emulsions

It is of interest to measure the monomer droplet size in emulsion polymerization. Unlike some monomers such as styrene and alkyl acrylates, vinyl chloride is in the gaseous state at the standard condition. Thus it is hard to measure the droplet size using any of the conventional methods. It is especially difficult when the droplet is smaller than 1 μm.

Using a high-pressure-proof syringe, vinyl chloride emulsion droplets can be fixed and stained through rapid reactions with osmium tetroxide dilute solution. The resulting stained particles are ready for transmission electron microscope (TEM) measurement. Emulsion droplets as small as 0.1 μm can be identified.

This technique can be utilized to study nucleation, particle growth mechanism, and the kinetics of emulsion polymerization.     

Simultaneous Droplet Size and Gas-Phase Turbulence Measurements in a Spray Flow using Phase-Doppler Interferometry

A recently developed method to increase the sensitivity of a phase-Doppler interferometer (PDI) has been applied to an annular air flow interacting with a spray under isothermal conditions in order to demonstrate the applicability of the method to obtaining velocity and turbulence characteristics of the gas-phase in a two-phase flow. A conventional PDI system operated in the first order refraction mode cannot be configured to efficiently detect small seed particles in the presence of large droplets due to the limited dynamic range of the photodetectors. It is therefore difficult or impossible to obtain seed particle detection rates sufficient for turbulence measurements. Doping the spray with a very small quantity of dye preferentially attenuates the light intensity scattered by large droplets, thus allowing the PDI system to detect small seed particles without damaging the photodetectors when large particles are present in the flow. Application of this method to a two-phase flow produced by a pressure-swirl atomizer coaxially located within an annular air jet has resulted in profiles of axial mean and fluctuating velocities and shear stresses as well as integral time scales and turbulent energy spectra.     

Sizing Polydisperse Dispersions by Focused Beam Reflectance and Small Angle Static Light Scattering

In this work, two different methods for particle characterization, namely focused beam reflectance and small angle static light scattering, are quantitatively compared. The results are presented in the form of moment ratios of the particle size distribution, i.e., the number weighted diameter, D_1/0, and the volume weighted diameter, D_4/3, for a broad range of particle size distributions ranging from 20 to 400 μm. Various aqueous dispersions including narrow, broad, and bimodal particle size distributions of spherical shaped ceramic beads were used in the comparison. It was found that the moment ratios obtained by focused beam reflectance measurements and small angle static light scattering correlate well, in the case of spherical particles. Furthermore, it was found that the D_1/0 values obtained by focused beam reflectance measurements are more sensitive to the presence of a small fraction of fine particles in a bimodal distribution than those obtained by small angle static light scattering.     

冲击波作用下微米尺度金属颗粒群的动力学行为

基于平面化爆驱动飞片高压加载技术和激光测速技术,研究了冲击波加载不同粒径锡颗粒群的微喷射行为以及在空气中的减速规律.实验结果表明,锡颗粒的最快喷射速度随粒径增大而显著增大.通过对微喷射形成过程的三维光滑粒子流体动力学方法数值模拟发现,大粒径锡颗粒之间存在较大的空隙结构,冲击波与空隙结构的相互作用诱导产生高速汇聚射流,空隙结构越大对应的喷射速度也越高.此外,通过研究不同粒径颗粒在复杂流场中的减速规律,进一步深化了对微喷射破碎后的颗粒尺度状态以及混合输运特性的认识.研究结果对于预测和分析冲击波加载微米颗粒群的微喷混合特性具有一定价值.     

Transient Response of Particle Distribution in a Chamber to Transient Particle Injection

We inject a large number of newly created nano‐particle aggregates into a chamber for the purpose of removing harmful contents in an indoor environment. This study is to experimentally and numerically investigate transient response of particle distributions to particle injections. A room‐sized chamber of 4 m × 2.1 m × 2.4 m is connected to a specially designed particle‐injection system, with two Optical Particle Counters used to simultaneously measure particle‐number densities with the size range from 0.3 μm to 10 μm at the inlet and in the chamber. A velocity probe measures the flow that is up to 1 m/s. An Euler‐type particulate‐phase‐transport model is developed and validated by comparing with experimental data. The study shows that the transient behavior of particle distributions is determined by many factors, including particle size, particle settling speed, sampling location, and velocity distribution. Particle number densities decrease in time more quickly for large particles than for small particles, and locations farther downstream in the chamber correlate more weakly with the inlet injection.     

Acoustic particle manipulation in a 40 kHz quarter-wavelength standing wave with an air boundary

An implementation of a quarter-wavelength standing wave separator that exploits an air drum to achieve the pressure node is presented and characterized experimentally. The air drum configuration was implemented and tested in a set-up with a 40 kHz transducer immersed in a water tank with the quarter-wavelength gap being approximately 9 mm wide. Injection of suspensions of 5 μm and 45 μm diameter polystyrene particles at flow rates of 30 ml/h and 60 ml/h was studied and particle deflection towards the pressure node at the air drum surface was observed for a range of acoustic pressures. Computational results on single particle trajectories show good agreement with the experimental findings for the 45 μm particles, but not for the 5 μm particles. These were considered to behave as aggregates of higher effective dimension, due to their much higher number density relative to the 45 μm particles in the suspensions used. The set-up developed in this study includes a robust method for achieving a pressure node in a quarter-wavelength system and can represent the first step toward the development of an alternative separator configuration in respect to small channel MHz range operated systems for the manipulation of particles streams.     

Size-fractionated characterization and quantification of nanoparticle release rates from a consumer spray product containing engineered nanoparticles

This study describes methods developed for reliable quantification of size- and element-specific release of engineered nanoparticles (ENP) from consumer spray products. A modified glove box setup was designed to allow controlled spray experiments in a particle-minimized environment. Time dependence of the particle size distribution in a size range of 10–500 nm and ENP release rates were studied using a scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS). In parallel, the aerosol was transferred to a size-calibrated electrostatic TEM sampler. The deposited particles were investigated using electron microscopy techniques in combination with image processing software. This approach enables the chemical and morphological characterization as well as quantification of released nanoparticles from a spray product. The differentiation of solid ENP from the released nano-sized droplets was achieved by applying a thermo-desorbing unit. After optimization, the setup was applied to investigate different spray situations using both pump and gas propellant spray dispensers for a commercially available water-based nano-silver spray. The pump spray situation showed no measurable nanoparticle release, whereas in the case of the gas spray, a significant release was observed. From the results it can be assumed that the homogeneously distributed ENP from the original dispersion grow in size and change morphology during and after the spray process but still exist as nanometer particles of size <100 nm. Furthermore, it seems that the release of ENP correlates with the generated aerosol droplet size distribution produced by the spray vessel type used. This is the first study presenting results concerning the release of ENP from spray products.     

Study of the sensitivity of size-averaged scattering matrix elements of nonspherical particles to changes in shape, porosity and refractive index

Studies of the physical parameters that influence the single scattering properties of a size distribution of small particles in random orientation are fundamental in understanding the origin of the observed dependence of the scattering matrix elements on the scattering angle. We present results of extensive calculations of the single scattering matrices of small nonspherical particles performed by a computational model based on the Discrete-Dipole Approximation. We have particularly studied the sensitivity of the size-averaged scattering properties at visible wavelengths of nonspherical, randomly oriented absorbing particles considering changes in shape, porosity and refractive index. These studies have importance regarding the inversion of physical properties of small particles as measured in the laboratory and the dust properties in various astrophysical and atmospherical environments. We have found that size distributions of randomly oriented irregular particles of different shape, including large aspect ratio particles, show similar scattering matrix elements as a function of the scattering angle, in contrast with the pattern found for regularly shaped particles of varying axis ratios, for which the scattering matrix elements as a function of the scattering angle show much larger differences among them. Regarding porosity, we have found a very different pattern in the scattering matrix elements for an ensemble of compact and porous particles. In particular, the linear polarization for incident unpolarized light produced by compact and absorbing particles of large size parameter tend to mimic the pattern found for large absorbing spheres. For porous particles, however, the linear polarization for incident unpolarized light tends to decrease as the size of the particle grows, with the maximum being displaced towards smaller and smaller scattering angles.     

Theoretical studies on particle shape classification based on simultaneous small forward angle light scattering and aerodynamic sizing

Particle shape contributes to understanding the physical and chemical processes of the atmosphere and better ascertaining the origins and chemical compositions of the particles. The particle shape can be classified by the aspect ratio,which can be estimated through the asymmetry factor measured with angularly resolved light scattering. An experimental method of obtaining the asymmetry factor based on simultaneous small forward angle light scattering and aerodynamic size measurements is described briefly. The near forward scattering intensity signals of three detectors in the azimuthal angles at 120?offset are calculated using the methods of T-matrix and discrete dipole approximation. Prolate spheroid particles with different aspect ratios are used as the shape models with the assumption that the symmetry axis is parallel to the flow axis and perpendicular to the incident light. The relations between the asymmetry factor and the optical size and aerodynamic size at various equivalent sizes, refractive indices, and mass densities are discussed in this paper. The numerically calculated results indicate that an elongated particle may be classified at diameter larger than 1.0 μm, and may not be distinguished from a sphere at diameter less than 0.5 μm. It is estimated that the lowest detected aspect ratio is around 1.5:1 in consideration of the experimental errors.     

Multiple scattering of light by water cloud droplets with external and internal mixing of black carbon aerosols

The mixture of water cloud droplets with black carbon impurities is modeled by external and internal mixing models.The internal mixing model is modeled with a two-layered sphere(water cloud droplets containing black carbon(BC) inclusions),and the single scattering and absorption characteristics are calculated at the visible wavelength of 0.55 μm by using the Lorenz-Mie theory.The external mixing model is developed assuming that the same amount of BC particles are mixed with the water droplets externally.The multiple scattering characteristics are computed by using the Monte Carlo method.The results show that when the size of the BC aerosol is small,the reflection intensity of the internal mixing model is bigger than that of the external mixing model.However,if the size of the BC aerosol is big,the absorption of the internal mixing model will be larger than that of the external mixing model.     

Fractional Penetrations for Electrostatically Charged Fibrous Filters in the Submicron Particle Size Range

Particle penetrations through commercially available, electrically charged fibrous filters have been measured. The particles were monodisperse and in charge equilibrium. Tests were conducted for several particle sizes in the range 0.02 μm ≤ x ≤ 1 μm. The face velocity was varied in the range of 2 cm/s to 30 cm/s. The penetration has a bimodal dependence on particle size. This behaviour is not found for uncharged filters. The reduction in penetration and bimodal dependence is attributed to electrical collection effects. As the face velocity is increased, the electrostatic collection effects are significantly reduced. The results agree quantitatively with a model for particle penetration through charged fibrous filters recently presented in the literature by the authors.     

Comparison of experiments and computations for cold gas spraying through a mask. Part 2

This paper presents experimental and simulation results of cold spray coating deposition using the mask placed above the plane substrate at different distances. Velocities of aluminum (mean size ~ 30 μm) and copper (mean size ~ 60 μm) particles in the vicinity of the mask are determined. It was found that particle velocities have angular distribution in flow with a representative standard deviation of 1.5–2 degrees. Modeling of coating formation behind the mask with account for this distribution was developed. The results of model agree with experimental data confirming the importance of particle angular distribution for coating deposition process in the masked area.     

A digital image analysis technique for quantitative characterisation of high-speed sprays

A digital image analysis technique developed as a particle or droplet sizing tool and capable of measuring non-spherical objects has been examined in terms of its suitability for quantitative measurements in moderately dense sprays and in particular the potential capability for the characterisation of small diameter, high-speed two-phase flows by employing high-intensity pulsed lasers for illumination. In order to evaluate robustness of the image analysis technique (PDIA), measurement certainty and also to assess whether measurement performance is sensitive to the optical set-up, the technique was applied to data obtained from a hollow cone spray via two independent optical configurations which employed firstly a diode laser and secondly an Nd:YAG laser. The calibration response of the two optical set-ups revealed significant differences in terms of the depth-of-field characteristics and thus effective measurement volume dimensions. Despite these differences, a comparison of PDIA spray data revealed excellent agreement between the two datasets for measured diameters in the range 10–90 μm in the number distributions which not only confirmed robustness of the technique but also the potential of PDIA for the measurement of fast, small diameter objects. Subsequent comparisons of the PDIA data were made with PDA data obtained within the same spray in space and time and showed excellent agreement between the two techniques for droplets larger than approximately 25 μm in diameter. Discrepancies between PDIA and PDA were observed in the volume size distributions for the larger droplets measured whose diameters were greater than approximately 40 μm. This discrepancy is due to the ability of PDIA to measure the diameter of non-spherical droplets which were shown to exist in significant numbers at this measurement location within the spray. In contrast, the well-established technique PDA, which relies on the assumption of droplet sphericity clearly does not detect the presence of these larger deformed droplets.