Monitoring of highly concentrated suspensions by ultrasonic scattering

A new method for inline characterization of particles in high concentrated suspensions by ultrasonic scattering is described by extracting the statistical features of scattered sound waves that correlate with the particle size and concentration. To provide a high spatial resolution and range - in case of media with high attenuation - ultrasonic sensors with a high bandwidth and intensity are used in combination with signal coding techniques. The effects of particle dependent attenuation and multiple reflections are investigated by processing the signals in the frequency and time domain. Further, a spatial dependent attenuation coefficient is calculated that is equivalent to the values gained by conventional transmission methods.