Abstract
In this paper, the separation performance of water droplets from air including water droplets by eliminators is investigated theoretically and experimentally.
The plates of eliminators used here are made of polyvinyl chloride, and are approximately represented by the sine-wave form. These eliminators have three different half wavelengths 65, 38, 16 mm, wave amplitudes 18, 9, 4.5 mm, and gaps between plates 30, 15, 12 mm, respectively. The number of wave cycles in their corrugated plates is three, therefore the bending number is six.
For comparison, the other eliminators are prepared which are made of 1.0 mm thick acrylic sheet bended sharply to make zig-zag flow passages.
For all of the eliminators mentioned above, the mass flow rate of water droplets is varied over the range of 16.14×10-3 to 234.96×10-3 mg/mm2 min., with the size of water droplets being varied over the range of 5 to 125μm.
The separation efficiencies of these eliminators are sufficiently in good agreement with those predicted by theoretical analysis for water droplets to be assumed to have a Stokes law resistance to relative motion with the air.
And, as the results of this theoretical analysis show, the separation efficiencies of the eliminators with the sine-wave form are nearly consistent with those of the eliminators with sharply bended form through experiments, but the resistance coefficients of the sine-wave eliminators are about 40 percent in the maximum value less than those of the another eliminators in this experimental range.
Furthermore, characteristics of water droplet size distributions at the inlet and the outlet to the eliminators are also investigated.
