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Real-Time Holographic
Water-Drop-Size Measurement System—
Dr. Fedor Dimov,
Mr. Gordon Drew, Business
Official, gdrew@poc.com
DOE Grant No. DE-FG02-04ER84042
Amount: $749,899
To fully understand the global warming problem, the
properties of the stratus clouds that cover much of the earth must be
understood. In particular, new
instrument technology is needed to make statistically significant measurements
of the size distribution of water drops in these clouds. The regimes of interest include diameters from
3 to 200 microns, with total concentrations on the order of 10 to 100 drops per
cubic centimeter. Existing in situ optical instruments, used on
research aircraft and on the ground for measuring the drop size distribution of
water clouds, are inherently limited in the volume — and thus drop size — they
can measure. In the best technology,
digital holography, resolution is limited by the large pixels of the imaging
CCD cameras. This project will develop a new holographic water drop size measurement
system with high-resolution (less than a micron), a highly sensitive (0.1
microjoule exposure level per square centimeter) photothermoplastic recording
material for the hologram, and a high-speed and high-resolution CMOS camera for
image recording and processing. It will
record holograms in real time and increase system field-of-view, meaning that a
larger number of droplets can be analyzed.
In
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The high-resolution, high-speed, holographic water droplet measuring system should find extensive commercial applications in atmospheric measurement; oil-fired direct-absorbing chillers and microturbines; and biological, medical, university, and research facilities. It also should improve the efficiency of fuel and commercial irrigation systems.