Abstract
This chapter will discuss new software, Particles and Geometric Shapes Analyzer (APOGEO), aiming the determination of aspect ratio and sphericity of solid particles by image processing technique without any manual work. This software can quantify the major and minor axes correlating two or three dimensions of particles (e.g.: biomass, mineral, pharmaceutical and food products) to obtain their shape. The particles can be associated with different geometries such as, rectangular parallelepiped, cylinder, oblate and prolate spheroids, and irregular. The results are presented in histograms and tables, but also can be saved in a spreadsheet.
TopBackground
The influence of biomass particle shapes cannot be ignored in particle transportation, mixing and fluidization processes. Various particle shapes result in different particle surface areas, in which are heat and mass transfer processes (Guo et al., 2012). Rodriguez et al. (2013) have presented a review about different methods and techniques to determine the geometrical shape of the particles. The authors observed that there is no agreement on the usage of the descriptors and is not clear which descriptor is the best. A large scale shape classification has been a problem. In addition, the authors considered that image analysis is a promising tool; it presents advantages like low time consumption or repeatability.
When non-spherical solid particles are observed through a microscope, various methods can be used for their sizing, resulting in terms of an equivalent spherical particle. Projected images in microscopes (optical, scanning and transmission) are in two-dimensional and depend on the orientation of the particles (Turbitt-Daoust, Alliet, Kaye, & Matchett, 2000). Particles in a stable orientation tend to have a maximum area causing microscopic measurements larger values than those presented by other methods, i.e., when smaller particle sizes are discarded.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Fluidized Bed: Technology related to the fine and large solids transforming into a fluid-like state through contact with a gas or liquid.
Graphical Interface: The interface between a human and a computer through windows, symbols and images.
Data Structure: A particular way of storing information, allowing to a high level approach on the software implementation.
Image Processing: A computer technique which process a two dimensional picture.
Object-Oriented Programming: A programming paradigm that uses “objects” and their interactions to design applications and computer programs.
Recurrence or Recursion: A function or method that replicates itself into entries until reach the base case.
Particle Sphericity: The description of the overall shape of the particle irrespective of angularity of edges and corners.