The aim of this study is to highlight the re-entrainment phenomenon encountered with an electrostatic agglomerator having a fibrous collecting electrode and treating submicron particles. The idea is to propose a process to control the particle number emitted by automotive diesel engines. Rather than trying to directly measure agglomerates of diesel particles exiting the agglomerator, we propose working with a synthetic submicron aerosol dispersed in ambient filtered air as a representative exhaust gas. The study will contribute to build a numerical modeling of the behavior of particles in such a process. The particular point that will be treated here is the collected particle re-entrainment as micron-sized agglomerates. We propose a joint experimentation/modeling approach to approximate the re-entrained aerosol size distribution in controlled conditions. From the modeling point of view, a local approach which uses the method of the balance of moments on agglomerates provides the re-entrained particle size in the agglomerator, according to the filtration conditions. The experimental approach confirms the clearly micron-sized character of the re-entrained agglomerates. This is unambiguously shown by measuring a greater micron particle numerical concentration downstream from the agglomerator than upstream. We show that the fluorescein submicron particles use can greatly simplify the characterization of an electrostatic agglomerator by allowing the use of a commercial laser granulometer to measure the size and the number of the generated agglomerates. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.