I am performing solid state fermentation experiment using fruit waste, in which I need to vary particle size from 1 to 10mm. I want to the simplest technique to measure its particle size?
Simply use standard Mesh. Mesh sizes are standardized. If you have a 10 mm mesh, it means particles no more than that size will go through it. A 5 mm mesh will exclude 10, 9, 8, 7, and 6 mm sized particles. A 2 mm mesh will exclude ...
I think you are aware of fruit waste not occuring "naturally" in well defined grains sizes but rather in crushed or squeezed form .
If really you'd like to have well definded fruit pieces, you better cut the fruit waste down into pieces like you would do with vegetables in the kitchen instead of measuring the size distribution.
If you take into account that you will not be able to have very well defined size fractions, sieving (Maurice's answer) will work. However, in this case you shouldn't name your size fraction by diameter but rather characterize them by mesh size of the sieves you used, e.g. 12 mm > x > 8 mm.
Taking a phothograph of a single layer well seprarated pieces of your fruiet waste and subsequent picture analysis might be another way to characterize grain size.
By the way: sieveing wet material containing fibres at mesh sizes < 10 mm will be challenging and might result in clogged sieves.
Good luck!
Hermann
postscriptum:
of course, the scale of your setup might exclude chipping well defined pieces from fruit.
If you are going into a scale of more than a few kilograms, you have to try cutting down your material by one or another kind of mill or chopper, take a representative sample and do a sieve analysis of that sample with a stack of standard sieves (as Maurice recommended). A sample might be sieved wet with a surplus of water in order avoid clogging. The material sieved will not be useful in your test because part of the readidy biodegradable material is being washed out by wet sieving.
Once again: good luck!
Hermann
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Correction