Abstract We prove the convergence of the vortex blob method for a family of nonlinear evolutionary partial differential equations (PDEs), the so-called b-equation. This kind of PDEs, including the Camassa-Holm equation and the Degasperis-Procesi equation, has many applications in diverse scientific fields. Our convergence analysis also provides a proof for the existence of the global weak solution to the b-equation when the initial data is a nonnegative Radon measure with compact support.