Electrostatic Precipitators Fundamentals

S. Oglesby and G. B Nichols, "A Manual of Electrostatic Precipitator Technology, Part I -Fundamentals," Contract CRA 2269-73 for NAPCA, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1970, pp. 5-7. 

Electrostatic precipitation is one of the fundamental means of separating solid or liquid particles from gas streams. This technique has been utilized in numerous applications, including industrial gas-cleaning systems, air cleaning in general ventilation systems, and household room air cleaners. 

The electrostatic precipitator in Example 2.2 is typical of industrial processes the operation of most process equipment is so complicated that application of fundamental physical laws may not produce a suitable model. For example, thermodynamic or chemical kinetics data may be required in such a model but may not be available. On the other hand, although the development of black box models may require less effort and the resulting models may be simpler in form, empirical models are usually only relevant for restricted ranges of operation and scale-up. Thus, a model such as ESP model 1 might need to be completely reformulated for a different size range of particulate matter or for a different type of coal. You might have to use a series of black box models to achieve suitable accuracy for different operating conditions. 

While. H. J. (1963) Industrial Electrostatic Precipitation, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. This highly readable monograph contains much practical operating data as well as discussions of fundamentals. 

Monodispersed polystyrene latex particles 1.049 pm in diameter (std dev = 0.0587 pm) were captured utilizing a radial flow parallel-plate mobility analyzer (Tardos et. al. 1984). The mobility of the particles was determined from measurements of the collection efficiency of the analyzer by sampling particle number density for the inlet and exit flows (Figure 3-10). The principle was fundamentally that of electrostatic precipitation. The particles were charged by a corona discharge. The particles capture efficiency in the mobility... 

The third mechanism by which proteins affect the stability of emulsions is rheological. This mechanism derives fundamentally from electrostatic and steric effects. The importance of viscosity has been described earlier. The viscosity of a caseinate solution is, inter alia, an indicator of the degree of bound water absorbed by the hydrophilic groups, as well as the water trapped inside the molecular aggregates (Korolczuk, 1982). The viscosity parameters (K, apparent viscosity at zero shear stress n, the power law factor and o-y, the yield stress) of sodium caseinate have been studied and found to be affected by concentration (Hermansson, 1975), precipitation and solution pH of caseinate (Hayes and Muller, 1961 Korolczuk, 1982), de-naturation (Hayes and Muller, 1961 Canton and Mulvihill, 1982), sodium chloride (Hermansson, 1975 Creamer, 1985), calcium chloride (Hayes and Muller, 1961) and temperature (Korolczuk, 1982). 

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