The output from a linear diode array is used in a modified laser Doppler velocimeter to measure the size and shape of irregular particles. The sizing accuracy for transparent and opaque particles between 30 and 140 µm is better than 10%. The inaccuracy caused by trajectories that lay at angles of less than 24° to the axis of the array was less than +5%, and a further inaccuracy of +5% was caused by defocusing of the particle from the center of the velocimeter measuring volume by up to ±500 µm. The advantages of the shadow Doppler technique over other techniques for sizing irregular particles, such as amplitude systems with pointer volumes, are that the shadow Doppler technique records shape, the optical arrangement is more robust, less precise alignment is required, and the equipment can be constructed at low cost.
We report the application of the Shadow Doppler Velocimeter (SDV) for spatial precise, simultaneous measurement of the size and velocity to assess the particle retention performance of a laboratory, 1/6 scale, 10 kW vertically‐fired atmospheric model of the pressurised pulverised‐coal furnace of Reichert et al. [1]. The SDV is based on the imaging of a conventional LDV probe volume onto a linear photodiode array and has the advantage over other sizing methods for irregular particles that it is tolerant of the optical misalignment and fouling which are inevitable when passing laser beams through windows in such furnaces. The size and two components of velocity of burning coal particles were measured in the present geometry which has 172 mm furnace diameter and 40 mm lateral exit duct diameter and a calculated exit bulk velocity of 4 m/s, evaluated at 300 K. The Sauter mean diameter of the particles is, within the experimental error, uniform at about 40 μm in the vertical profile normal to the axis of the exhaust pipe, 34.5 mm upstream of the exit. Coal particle velocities in the near‐exit region are directed towards the exit, closely following the gas‐phase velocities. Both these observations imply that particle retention efficiency due to streamline curvature is low and extrapolation suggests that there will be even less at large scales.
The performance of a laser‐based optical technique to measure simultaneously the velocity and equivalent diameter of nonsphercial particles was evaluated. The size information was provided by the absolute intensity of diffractively scattered light by a particle crossing a single laser beam, which is concentric with a laser Doppler probe volume. The response curve (size‐intensity relationship) of the technique was estimated by calculations using the Fraunhofer approximation. Experiments with spherical glass and polyethylene and non‐spherical metal and ceramic particles ranging from 20 to 200 μm confirmed the operation of the technique and in all the measurements the maximum error of the average diameter was 10 μm as compared with size information provided by a microscope.
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