Abstract In this paper, we demonstrate the application of the Dirac-lognormal bimodal moment approach to investigate aerosol dynamics in dusty plasmas. This approach was evaluated by comparison with the detailed and computationally expensive sectional approach for two dusty plasma systems. The first one is a sputtering Argon DC discharge and the second is a capacitively coupled Ar/C 2 H 2 radio-frequency (CCRF) discharge. The results obtained by the bimodal and the sectional approaches are in good agreement for the sputtering DC discharge where the aerosol dynamics is dominated by nucleation and surface deposition growth processes. This agreement is obtained not only on the averaged characteristics of the particle cloud, but also on the detailed particle size distributions. In the case of the CCRF discharge a satisfactory agreement between the two approaches is obtained on the averaged characteristics and on the core distributions of the particle cloud even if a significant difference is observed at low and intermediate particle size. Nevertheless, the bimodal moment approach is accurate enough for the simulation of the dusty plasmas of interest. Its low-computational cost makes it a very effective method as far as dusty plasma simulation is concerned.