On the various methods of deducing aerosol size distribution from diffusional decay measurements

Summary The value of three different methods for deducing aerosol size distribution from diffusional decay measurements — the exhaustion method proposed byPollak andMetnieks, the method byFuchs et al. and the method byNolan andScott — is investigated with numerical examples of known distributions and also by applying them to laboratory experiments. It was found that the exhaustion method and the method proposed byFuchs et al. are satisfactory for deducing the mean particle size and that none of the three methods is quite satisfactory for deducing dispersion of the distributions with higher accuracy.