Premium
Macroscale modelling of pressure drop for a moulded cylindrical filter within a vacuum pump to predict aerosol loading
Author(s) -
Basha Nausheen,
Cochrane Lloyd,
Hamad Faik
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
asia‐pacific journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.348
H-Index - 35
eISSN - 1932-2143
pISSN - 1932-2135
DOI - 10.1002/apj.2431
Subject(s) - pressure drop , aerosol , filter (signal processing) , fluent , mechanics , drop (telecommunication) , computational fluid dynamics , environmental science , materials science , flow (mathematics) , petroleum engineering , mechanical engineering , meteorology , engineering , physics , electrical engineering
Abstract Computational fluid dynamics is used as a tool to predict the oil aerosol loading on filters moulded through ARTm® and are used in an oil‐injected vacuum pump. These filters are essential for reducing exhaust emissions, which, when suspended can cause great harm to the environment, climate, equipment life, and public health. However, flow characteristics in a coalescing filter are quite complex to solve using limited computational power. Therefore, an economically viable model is developed in ANSYS FLUENT with a customised algorithm to determine pressure drop and loading profile across a filter. Oil droplets entering the filter are treated as Rosin–Rammler distribution and are solved through Euler–Lagrangian approach. The developed algorithm is capable of predicting pressure drop with a lower discrepancy of 15% when compared with experimental data for two different flow rates. This model is then used to understand effect of flow characteristics on aerosol loading with resulting velocity ratio of 0.2 that will lead to even aerosol loading on filter media. © 2020 Curtin University and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.