Computation of Electric Charged Micro-particles and Fluid Flows in Filtration Process

Abstract

Numerical simulation of particle filtration is performed using the MICS (Multiphase lncompressible flow solver with Collocated grid System) for multiphase flows and the DEM (Discrete Element Method) for uncharged or charged particle dynamics. This study deals with micro-particles and fluid flows through a single pore, which is larger than the particle size, modeled with two solid objects at the micro-scale. For an understanding of the effect of the electrostatic force between the electric-charged particles and objects, the interaction force is implemented based on Coulomb's law. The computational results show that the number density of the particles around the objects tends to be high by giving the electrostatic attractive force between the negatively charged particles and the positively charged objects. It is confirmed that there is a possibility of improving the filtration performance by the electrostatic attractive force, in addition to increasing the pore size at the same time under the given conditions.