Method and apparatus for ultrasonic sizing of particles in suspensions

1. A particle size distribution monitor, comprising:

(a) a transducer adapted to be a source of ultrasonic energy and positioned in contact with a suspension containing a percent by volume of particles in a liquid, the transducer transmitting ultrasonic energy through the suspension wherein the energy comprises a wideband pulse containing a range of frequency components;

(b) a transducer adapted to be receive of ultrasonic energy and positioned in contact with said suspension to receive said wideband range of ultrasonic energy which has passed through the suspension;

(c) first means adapted to accept a signal from said receiver and make an instantaneous determination of the attenuation of the wideband ultrasonic energy in passing through the suspension comprising (i) an A/D digitizer for said signal, (ii) an FFT analyzer for the digitized signal, (iii) means to obtain the magnitude of the FFT data representing the measured attenuation, and (iv) means of controlling an additional attenuation of said signal from the receiver before it is processed by the A/D digitizer; and

(d) second means comprising means to determine an estimated PSD and means to compare the estimated PSD with the measured attenuation and determine the goodness of the fit.

2. A particle size distribution monitor, comprising:

(a) a transducer adapted to be a source of ultrasonic energy and positioned in contact with a suspension containing a percent by volume of particles in a liquid, the transducer transmitting ultrasonic energy through the suspension wherein the energy comprises a wideband pulse containing a range of frequency components;

(b) a transducer adapted to be a receiver of ultrasonic energy and positioned in contact with said suspension to receive said wideband range of ultrasonic energy which has passed through the suspension;

(c) first means adapted to accept a signal from said receiver and make an instantaneous determination of the attenuation of the wideband ultrasonic energy in passing through the suspension that is a computer that is remotely positioned from the transducers and is connected to the transducers by a fiber optic cable.

3. A method of monitoring the particle size distribution of particles in a suspension under dynamic conditions, comprising the steps of:

transmitting a first pulse of ultrasonic energy containing a wideband range of frequency components through the suspension which attenuates the pulse;

receiving the attenuated pulse after it has passed through the suspension;

developing a first signal representative of the attenuated first pulse;

digitizing the first signal with a high speed analog-to-digital converter to form a time domain signal;

applying a Fourier.trensform to convert the time domain signal to an equivalent frequency domain signal, or spectrum, for each signal;

converting the spectrum into dB to express the attenuation as a function of frequency;

reflecting the first pulse with a reflector;

detecting a first echo of the first pulse that has traveled over a first path length and determining the spectrum of the first echo;

detecting a second echo of the first pulse that has traveled over a second path length and determining the spectrum of the second echo;

determining the difference between the first echo spectrum and second echo spectrum and dividing said difference by the difference between the first path length and second path length to obtain an attenuation corrected for system variations.

4. A method of utilizing particle size monitoring to control a process for precipitating particles, comprising:

to collect data continuously about the attenuation of an ultrasonic pulse passed through a master batch of a solution which has a particle size that is changing;

generating a signal when the particle size reaches a predetermined attenuation value;

withdrawing a sub-batch of solution after the signal is generated;

predetermining a concentration of a second solution to be added to the withdrawn sub-batch based on the measured attenuation signal at the time of withdrawal;

adding said predetermined concentration of second solution to the sub-batch to precipitate particles.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the master batch is a metal salt solution and the particles precipitated are metal particles.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the metal salt solution is a silver salt solution and the particles precipitated are silver particles.