Ultrasonic determination of the particle concentration in model suspensions and ice slurry

Abstract : The development of ice slurry for refrigeration systems and the enhancement of its efficiency depend on an accurate control of the ice concentration. We present here an ultrasonic method capable to measure precisely the particle concentration in ice slurry. To calibrate the ultrasonic measurement, we first determine the sound velocity and attenuation in two model suspensions (glass beads/polyethylene glycol and polyethylene beads/vaseline oil) for different particle volume fractions. The experimental results show a good agreement with the predictions of the two-component models in the long-wavelength limit. Additionally, the sound attenuation reveals a clear signature of the aggregate formation in the nearly iso-dense suspension. We next conduct the measurement of the sound velocity in the polypropylene-glycol ice slurry where the ice concentration changes with temperature. The ice concentrations extracted from our sound velocity measurements are well consistent with the values determined from the binary phase diagram.