A numerical simulation of diffusion charging effect on collection efficiency in wire-plate electrostatic precipitators

In this paper, a numerical simulation was carried out to analyze the effect of diffusion charging on collection efficiency of a wire-plate electrostatic precipitator (ESP). The gas flow field, the electric field, and the particle field with diffusion charging considered were included in the numerical model, which was implemented by using the commercial FLUENT software. Collection efficiency was calculated by using the Deutsch-Anderson equation, in which the parameters were provided from the numerical solutions. The simulated results indicate that the effect of diffusion charging on the wire-plate ESP particle collection increases with the decreasing particle diameter, as well as applied potential, particularly for PM10. Moreover, with the increasing applied potential, collection efficiency of PM10 is obviously improved, and the effect extent first increases and then decreases with particle size increasing, but also, the size range of particle, which is significantly affected by the diffusion charging, becomes smaller. As gas velocity becomes higher, the effect of diffusion charging on grade efficiency also becomes more obvious, and the affected range of particle size gets much larger, however, at the price of grade efficiency decreasing. Using collection efficiency as reference variable of judgment, instead of particle charge, may lead to a more accurate estimation of the aforementioned size range, which can provide a great help in the further analysis of fine particle collection.