Lab Services

Particle Count Operations

The particle count uses a laser diode as the illumination source and a photodiode as the detector. The particles are passed through a sensor. When particles are present within the sensor’s micro cell, the particles block the laser beam from the photodiode detector. The loss of laser light generates an electronic pulse for each particle. These pulses are proportional in amplitude to the light intensity or light extinction, which is a measure of the particle size. The particle counter identifies the quantity and the height of the pulses by sorting the pulses into bins with predefined pulse amplitude ranges. The data is transferred to digital numbers and printed. The results formulate the ISO (International Standards Organization) code fraction. This numerator is the measure of particles greater than 5 microns and the denominator is the measure of particles greater than 15 microns.

Importance of the Particle Count Test

The importance of particle count analysis includes: identification of solid material, identifying abnormal wear conditions, monitoring the effects of filtration, and measuring overall system cleanliness.

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