In chemical looping combustion systems, accurate measurement of the solid circulation rate (SCR) is crucial for optimising the system performance. Conventionally, the SCR is predicted using the riser total pressure drop leading to an overestimation of up to 70%. In this work, a model has been proposed for the SCR prediction using the pressure drop at the top section of the riser. The height of this top section was determined by the riser gas-solid flow characteristics, namely, the axial solid holdup profile and lateral solid flux profile. A kinematic model was developed to predict the axial solid holdup profile and the reduced solid flux model developed by Rhodes et al. (1992) was employed to predict the mass fraction of upwards flowing solids. The prediction results of the proposed model were validated against the experimental data obtained in this work and those reported in the literature, where the prediction accuracy of SCR was significantly improved (by up to 60%) with a deviation of around 15%. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.