Particle & Particle Systems Characterization, Vol.18, No.5-6, 271-277, 2002
Mathematical description of the morphological genesis of flocs
The assessment or description of the internal morphology of floes plays an important role in the optimization of flocculation processes and the development of high-performance reaction systems. This paper is focused on mathematical algorithms-namely c-means clustering, fuzzy clustering, Fourier transformation and kernel smoothing-to reconstruct the internal cluster structure of floes. In principle, all methods are suitable to interpret the growth history of floes. However, it is shown that at the moment c-means clustering in combination with a data preparation step seems to be the most favorable procedure in that context. A detailed description of the data preparation procedure is not part of this work.