Particle measurement by acoustic speckle
AssigneeBaker Hughes Incorporated
InventorsMalcolm J. W. Povey, Jie Tong, Phillip V. Nelson, Gregory M. Jones
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Abstract
The invention provides a method and an apparatus for measuring the size, concentration and size distribution of particles in a fluid by determining the characteristics of an acoustic speckle signal of the particles and relating these characteristics to the size and concentration characteristics of the particles. The method and the apparatus are especially useful for the measurement of the size distribution of small particles in optically opaque liquids.
Claims57
A method for determining the size of particles in a fluid comprising the steps of obtaining an acoustic speckle signal of the particles in the fluid and deriving the size of the particles in the fluid from the acoustic speckle signal.
A method for measuring the concentration of particles in a fluid comprising the steps of obtaining an acoustic speckle signal of the particles in the fluid and deriving the concentration of particles in the fluid from the acoustic speckle signal.
A method for determining the size distribution of particles in a fluid comprising the steps of obtaining an acoustic speckle signal of the particles in the fluid and deriving the size distribution of the particles from the acoustic speckle signal.
A method for determining the degree of particle agglomeration in a liquid containing particles that produce individual speckle events, the method comprising obtaining, for two or more individual speckle events, an individual acoustic speckle signal from the liquid and determining the degree of agglomeration from the acoustic speckle signal.
An apparatus for determining the size distribution of particles in a fluid comprising a signal generator capable of generating an electrical signal;
- a transducer that can translate the electrical signal from the signal generator into an acoustic input signal that is introduced into the fluid;
- a sensor that can sense acoustic energy that is scattered by the particles in the fluid in reponse to their interation with the acoustic input signal and provide an output electrical signal that is related to the sensed acoustic energy;
- an oscilloscope that is capable of acquiring the output signal in an amplitude versus time domain and transforming the signal to a magnitude versus frequency domain;
- and a computer that is programmed with an algorithm that is capable of identifying an acoustic speckle signal in the frequency domain and relating the magnitude and/or duration of the acoustic speckle signal to the size distribution of the particles in the fluid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.