Investigation and Comparison of the Particle Collection Efficiency for Zinc Oxides (0.5-10 microns) in Cyclones and Electrostatic Precipitators with Coaxial DBDs

Abstract

Introduction: Rapid urbanization and industrialization have made controlling particulate matter pollution critical. Cyclones and electrostatic precipitators (ESPs) are two widely employed technologies. In this study, the efficiency, quality factor, pressure drop and energy consumption of these two systems were measured in the same dimensions and under different laboratory conditions. In addition, the energy consumption of the reinforced DBD coaxial ESP was also investigated. The aim of this study is to provide detailed information for comparing two particle collection systems with different operating conditions.

Material and Methods: Both devices were designed with the exact dimensions to investigate the collection efficiency, pressure drop, quality factor, and energy consumption. A standard Stairmand cyclone and a similarly sized ESP enhanced by coaxial DBDs were constructed. Experiments were conducted under isokinetic conditions according to the ASTM D3685 standard. Particle concentrations were measured using a Grimm 1.108 particle counter, and pressure drop was measured using a manometer. The performance of the two systems was evaluated by sampling both upstream and downstream of the cleaning devices and applying analytical formulas.

Results: A comparative analysis of cyclones and ESPs revealed that increasing temperature negatively impacted the collection efficiency of both systems. While cyclones benefited from higher particle concentrations, ESPs coaxial DBDs demonstrated optimal performance at intermediate concentrations. The study also found that increasing flow velocity significantly improved the collection efficiency of cyclones, whereas ESPs achieved their best performance at a lower, optimal velocity. However, the changes in particle collection efficiency in ESP were approximately 4-10% higher than in cyclone and have an optimum energy conception. Moreover, doubling the voltage above the corona threshold in ESPs resulted in a notable enhancement (about 16.3%). The energy consumption of the reinforced coaxial DBD ESP was measured at 12.09 J/L.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that ESP’s quality factor was significantly higher than cyclones when operated and consumed less energy than usual ESPs under the same conditions. The maximum quality factor achieved for ESPs highlighted their superior collection efficiency, lower pressure drops, and energy consumption