Determination of non-spherical particle size distribution from chord length measurements. Part 1: Theoretical analysis

In this paper, extensive theoretical studies are described on two important issues in translating a chord length distribution (CLD) measured by FBRM instrument into its particle size distribution (PSD) including PSD–CLD and CLD–PSD translation models for general non-spherical particles. Analytical solutions to calculate the PSD–CLD models for spherical and ellipsoidal particles are developed. For non-spherical particles, a numerical method is given to calculate the PSD–CLD model. The iterative non-negative least squares (NNLS) method is proposed in the CLD–PSD model, because of its many advantages converting measured CLD into its PSD, such as insensitivity to measurement noise and particle shape. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is validated by extensive simulations.