An analysis of the angular scatter measurement to determine the optical constants of coal and ashy materials

Theoretical analysis has been presented to assess the potential of angular scatter measurements to estimate the optical constants of combustion particulates. While the forward intensities are insensitive, the backward intensities are very weak and moderately sensitive to the optical constants only under a limited range of conditions. Thus accuracy of the optical constants retrieved from angular scatter measurements, which are complicated to perform, may be low particulary for weakly absorbing combustion particulates.