A new method has been developed to measure and evaluate the operational powder characteristics for fine particle processing based on the reentrainment phenomena. Experiments on particle reentrainment were carried out by use of an accelerated air flow for 21 different test powders. Both the reentrainment fluxes, which were measured by an electrostatic method, and the average air velocities were automatically sampled in a computer. The sampled data were processed to give the reentrainment profiles as a function of the average air velocity. The cumulative reentrainment efficiencies were also obtained and represented by a function of the wall shear stress.
It was found that fine particles having tendencies to form large aggregates were reentrained mainly in the early stage of the measurement where the flow velocity was as low as 5m·s^-1. Also, the mass ratio of the reentrained large aggregates to the total particles was well applied to obtain the information on the particle-particle or particle-wall interactions. On the other hand, the cumulative reentrainment efficiency-curves would be applied to determine the operational conditions controlling the amount of adhered particles in various aerosol processes.