The determination of aerosol size distributions from diffusional decay measurements

The decay of a heterogeneous population of particles such as occurs when a heterogeneous aerosol is decaying by diffusion of particles to the containing walls may be used to estimate the distribution function of the heterogeneous population. By making observations as the decay proceeds, it is possible to obtain a “decay curve” which is the Laplace transform of that distribution function which relates the number of particles to the diffusion coefficients of the particles.