This document is a draft of the final report of the first stage of an IFPRI project, "Particle Characterisation". The document is intended to summarise the state of the subject, Particle Characterisation, for the benefit of the member companies of IFPRI. In particular, it is intended to form the basis for discussions at the annual meeting of IFPRI in June, 1980 and for recommendations on any further stages of this project. The document may well serve to act as a guide in the consideration of new proposals which may arise in the relatively near future on this topic.
The approach which has been adopted is to conduct a literature search covering a time span of five years. It may reasonably be assumed that anything which occurred previously is either developed and discussed within this period, is well known or was not worthy of note. That bibliography is listed as Part 5 of-this report. The bibliography has been classified into sections which either appeared as identifiable and significant, sections or, alternatively, correspond to a topic which was identified by member companies as having specific interest. In some of these sections the literature is sparse. The literature on which the specialised reports which were the subject of sub-contract is included separately with those reports at this stage although that can be compounded into the bibliography list in the final report. The survey has included some Japanese literature but the work in that country is presumably subject to much more intensive survey in the report which is submitted by Professor Inoya.
The member companies of IFPRI identified eleven topics as being of special interest to them at the time of the survey in 1979. Four of those topics were particularly specialised and were made the subject of a separate sub-contract for review by an appropriate university department. Those reports which have been received by 10th May are included as section 6. The reports which were not received at that , time will either be tabled at the June meeting or will be included in the final report of the first stage of the project. The other seven topics were mainly concerned with particle size measurement, with the measurement of process variables such as velocity and concentration and with the measurement of particle density. Section 3 constitutes a review of the significance of the literature search on those topics highlighting significant papers and commenting upon the state of knowledge of the subject and the current activity in research and apparent application. The topic of pore size measurement has, for this purpose, been ignored and inoludsd with ths sub-contract on surface area measurement.
In order to put these various reviews into context, an overall appraisal of the subject of particle characterisation has been written, discussing basically the philosophy of the subject and attempting to create an overview through which the other topics might be related. This is presented in Section 2.
Included in the IFPRI Proposal on Particle Characterisation were two other items. Firstly, a view on the current problems in particle characterisation and secondly a proposal as to how IFPRI might proceed in this topic. This survey has obviously not substantially changed the opinions of the authors in these two matters but it is, perhaps, necessary to reiterate and expand them for the purposes of discussion at the annual meeting. Section 4 expresses a view on the current problems in particle characterisation and the areas which are timely for development. It is a reiteration of the opinions in Section 3 of the original proposal. Section 4 is also a recommendation of the course of action which could be followed by IFPRI and is a reiteration of Section 5 of the original proposal.