Particle Size and Shape Measurements of Soot Using Image Analysis - Lab Report Example

The shapes of the particles were not purely rounded. The soot image had slightly larger particles having an area of approximately 8.6 cm squared. The solidity of the particles was found to be relatively high for the soot images that was swelling. Introduction. In industrial sectors, accurate and quick analysis of particle size distribution is of great importance. In many cases, the surface growth of the soot has been seen to be more dominant that the soot mass yield. A number of operations of mineral processing rely on the distribution of sizes and measurements that are key in bettering the efficiencies of the industrial sectors (Megaridis 14).

A significant number of industrial processes of soot are mostly established through the distribution of the sizes of particles in their industrial processes. To characterize the soot growth rate, the theoretical model assessment is the surface area of the soot. For instance, the growth of the mass of soot normally comes before the abstraction of hydrogen establishing a radical surface site in the acetylene preparation. In these processes, the rate of mass addition relies on the total area of the surface and the amount of reactive surfaces.

A substantial number of parameter that identify soot’s growth rate can be measured in an optical manner such as the fraction volume of the soot, temperature, and velocity. Such measurements are beneficial due to their non-intrusive nature, and the fact they occur in real time. The optical measurement of the size of the particle can facilitate the soot mass growth measurement and the rates of oxidation per surface area. A number of studies conducted on this field have determined the size of the soot particles using different methods like the electron transmission microscopy, time intensive and intrusive processes, and thermophoretic soot sampled micrograph among other methods.

So far, there is no study that has used image analysis to determine the shape and size of soot particles. In this respect, a study was set to investigate the particle size and shape measurements of soot using image analysis. Theory. A digital image is made up of different pixel that are normally assigned a specific value. In the digital vision, the process of segmentation can be referred to as a partitioning process of the digital image into several segments (Harris 3). In this respect, the segmentation objective is normally to change or simplify the image representation into an easier an meaningful image for analysis.

One of the simplest methods in image analysis is thresholding. Beginning with a grayscale image, binary images can be obtained through thresh holding. Binary images can be defined as digital images having only two pixel values (Sunderland 7). In many situations the two categories of colours used in binary imaging involve black and white. In this process, the shape descriptors of particles from the analysis of the image are normally determined through the use of values that are measured for the area, major, perimeter, and minor axis parameters.

These values are normally given out through the image analyzer and can be identified as a critical tool in the particles classification of shape (Howard 1107). The calculation of the particles’s shape can be given by equation 1. C = 4pi* [Area/ Perimeter2]