At a minimum, you need to know the particle concentration. Just knowing the particle size won't help. Assuming you do know, what technique are you referring to for measuring the particle size? Is it a mean value? Median? A distribution? Are the values number-, area-, volume-, other-weighted? Are you talking about particles in liquids?

Hi John,

Yes, Ideally concentration would've been the easiest, unfortunately I have only been given the particle sizes (micro m).

But I do have the samples, so I can put them in Mastersizer and get the D(4,3), D(3,2) or a mean value, or a distribution. if it would help with the analysis.

RE is it liquid? They are milk fat particles so it does depend on temp., at the moment I am evaluating them at 11C which they are semi-solid (melting temp is 40C).

You can't get the volume fraction without the concentration. The size would be the same if you had one particle in a swimming pool or ten billion particles in a drop.

Marjan Javanmard

The Mastersizer provides you a volume/volume fraction based on the Beer-Lambert (strictly Bouguer) relationship. For this to work correctly you need the optical properties of milk fat (and these are well known). Note that the result stated on the report is a %volume concentration i.e [100*volume species]/total volume. You need to know the dilution factor too - assume one drop is 0.05 mL and that you've measured the volume of the accessory by removing the tubing and draining into a measuring cylinder. Some more related information in this webinar (registration required):

Laser Diffraction Masterclass 3: Optical Properties - How Can Material Optical Properties be Measured

https://www.malvernpanalytical.com/en/learn/events-and-training/webinars/W200414OpticalProp.html

Look for the information 33:00 onwards...

Thank Alan!

You may try using the coulter counter instrument.

Thanks Rajat.