To control particulate air pollutant emissions, there have been many attempts to include the effect of electrostatic force in conventional scrubbers. They can be classified into the following three types. 1) Dust particles are charged electrically to improve collection efficiencies of conventional scrubbers. 2) Charged water droplets are sprayed electrohydrodynamically and dust particles are collected by impact scrubbing. 3) Dust particles and water droplets are charged electrically and dust particles are collected by electrostatic force. Type 3) can be also classified as follows; 3-1) Dust particles and water droplets are oppositely charged. The dust particles are deposited to the water droplet surface by Coulomb force, and the droplets are collected to the inside wall of the precipitator by electrostatic diffusion. 3-2) Dust particles and water droplets are charged to the same polarity. The dust particles and water droplets are collected to the inside wall of the precipitator by electrostatic diffusion. The collection efficiencies of the types 3-1) and 3-2) are similar, so, if particles and droplets can be charged at a time by a unit charge device, the type 3-2) will be simpler in the structure. In the type of 3) water droplets must be small enough to keep long life in the precipitator. In this paper, we considered the Vapor Inject & Charge Method belongs to 3-2), in which saturated vapor is injected into the dust laden gas, condensed water droplets are charged by corona discharge and precipitated to the inside wall of the precipitator duct by the effect of electrostatic diffusion. In comparison with the conventional electrostatic precipitators, which utilize electric field made by the space charge of continuously supplied corona, our method utilizes the electric field made by the space charge of water droplets which must be gradually collected. Therefore, it cannot outperform electrostatic precipitators in collection efficiency, but the structure of dust precipitating zone is much simpler. At first, we deduced, for monodisperse dust particles, theoretical equations to predict collection efficiencies based on a few assumptions. The equations showed that the factors which have direct effects upon collection efficiencies η are: inlet air velocity, V_a, temperature and humidity of inlet air, conditions of injected vapor, mass rate of injected vapor G_v, dimensions of the corona charger, current in the corona charger i_c and length of the precipitator duct L. Another factors which will have indirect effects upon collection efficiencies are: diameter of dust particles δ_p, qualities of dust particles, number concentration of dust particles n_p, diameter of the precipitator duct and the shape of vapor injection nozzle. Next, we made experiments on the effects of six factors of V_a, G_v, i_c, L, δ_p, n_p on collection efficiencies. Inlet air conditions were 20℃ dry bulb temperature and 80% relative humidity. The corona charger was made of co-cylindrical copper electrodes, and the precipitator duct was made of grounded aluminium pipe with diameter 32mm and thermally insulated from room air temperature. The uniform diameter particles of polystylene latex were fed to the inlet air as test aerosol, and the particle number cocentration in outlet air was counted by B & L Dust Counter 40-1 after diluting and drying outlet air with large amount of dry clean air. Experimental results were in approximate agreement with theoretical calculations except on the case of lower G_v. An example of experimental results was η=97.5% at V_a=1m/s,G_v=1/10, i_c=8μA/cm, L=10m, δ_p=0.312μm, n_p=6×10^1_0 particles/m^3. So we concluded that the Vapor Inject & Charge Method has enough collection efficiencies to control submicron particulate air pollutant emission.
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