Study on the performance of wet electroscrubber in purifying airborne particles.

BACKGROUND In this study, an electroscrubber was designed and experimented for evaluation of integrating particle and droplet charging effects separately and jointly on collection efficiency of a spray tower and also to discover the optimal condition. METHODS A homogenous concentration of relatively fine particles was introduced to influent air stream and electroscrubber efficiency in purifying them was determined through the measurement of input and output particles concentration. The effect of various conditions such as particles and droplets charging alone and together (bipolar) for several applied voltages has been studied. RESULTS In all of experiments, the applied charging voltage has a key role in promotion of electroscrubber efficiency. Maximum collection efficiency has achieved for 15 Kilovolt (Kv). The effectiveness of bipolar charging of particles and droplets with 15 Kv was higher than that of no-charging and singly charging. In other words, efficiency can be increased from 84.43% to 93.22 for total particles and from 50.8% to 75.16% for submicron particles. The maximum improvement of collection efficiency (42.2%) relates to bipolar charging of the initial size group with diameter smaller than 0.3 micrometer (µm) and the minimum (0.5%) to sizing group of 11 with diameter 4-5 µm. CONCLUSIONS This approach can be an appropriate option for the purpose of purifying submicron particles in spray tower scrubbers.