[Particle Size and Number Density Online Analysis for Particle Suspension with Polarization-Differentiation Elastic...

The basic principle of polarization-differentiation elastic light scattering spectroscopy based techniques is that under the linear polarized light incidence, the singlely scattered light from the superficial biological tissue and diffusively scattered light from the deep tissue can be separated according to the difference of polarization characteristics. The novel point of the paper is to apply this method to the detection of particle suspension and, to realize the simultaneous measurement of its particle size and number density in its natural status. We design and build a coaxial cage optical system, and measure the backscatter signal at a specified angle from a polystyrene microsphere suspension. By controlling the polarization direction of incident light with a linear polarizer and adjusting the polarization direction of collected light with another linear polarizer, we obtain the parallel polarized elastic light scattering spectrum and cross polarized elastic light scattering spectrum. The difference between the two is the differential polarized elastic light scattering spectrum which include only the single scattering information of the particles. We thus compare this spectrum to the Mie scattering calculation and extract the particle size. We then also analyze the cross polarized elastic light scattering spectrum by applying the particle size already extracted. The analysis is based on the approximate expressions taking account of light diffusing, from which we are able to obtain the number density of the particle suspension. We compare our experimental outcomes with the manufacturer-provided values and further analyze the influence of the particle diameter standard deviation on the number density extraction, by which we finally verify the experimental method. The potential applications of the method include the on-line particle quality monitoring for particle manufacture as well as the fat and protein density detection of milk products.