Measuring the porosity and compressibility of liquid-suspended porous particles using ultrasound.

A key parameter describing the behavior of suspensions is the volume fraction ϕ of the solid particles that are dispersed in the liquid. Obtaining accurate values for ϕ becomes difficult for porous particles, because they can absorb some of the liquid. A prime example are the widely used cornstarch suspensions, for which ϕ usually is only estimated from the mass fraction of particles. Here we present a method to measure the effective porosity and compressibility of porous particles with ultrasound. We obtain the speed of sound in dilute cornstarch suspensions at multiple particle concentrations and with different solvent compressibilities. With the measured particle porosity of 0.31 we are able to calculate the volume fraction of the saturated particles reliably.