Continuous Imaging Fluid Particle Analysis: A Primer

摘要

Many scientific endeavors involve the use of particulate matter suspended within a liquid. Typically these endeavors are a part of a "process" which is being studied for reasons of determining cause and effect during a discovery process, and later for monitoring the state of that particular "process" once something is known about the causes and effects. Typical examples include water quality analysis and monitoring, chemical process analysis and monitoring in manufacturing, and pure scientific research. A critical issue in these "processes" is the measurement and analysis of the particulate matter present in the process. In very few cases are the particles under study large enough to be quantified and analyzed by the naked eye. With the advent of the microscope, scientists were now able to study some of these particles in great levels of detail. As technology has advanced over the years, with the introduction of instruments such as the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), scientists have been able to look at increasingly smaller particles and even down to the molecular level. This paper will look at the issues associated with fluid particle analysis, discuss some of the historical methods used, and introduce a new technology, the continuous imaging fluid particle analyzer, which offers an automated method for particle analysis which can be used over a broad range of material types/sizes, both in the laboratory and in the field.