Colloidal particle deposition in turbulent flow

A theoretical analysis is presented which describes the initial deposition of monodispersed spherical colloidal particles from a steady fully developed turbulent flow onto conduit walls. When the net particle-conduit electrical interaction potential is attractive, particle deposition is shown to be often governed by turbulent hydrodynamics. When the net particle-conduit electrical interaction potential possess a repulsive maximum, particle deposition to first order is uniform and depends solely on electrical interaction effects. The developed theoretical model specialized to orifice deposition with the use of Harwell Flow3D turbulence modelling software qualitatively described the deposition of 0.5 {mu}m silica particles onto glass orifices from an aqueous suspension. The effect of the electrical double layer on the rate of colloidal particle deposition in laminar flow has been described by Spielman and Friedlander (1), Dahneke (2), Bowen et al. (3) and Bowen and Epstein (4). This article describes the extension of their work to colloidal particle deposition under steady fully developed turbulent flow conditions. This article also reports the results of orifice particle deposition experiments which were conducted to qualitatively investigate the developed theoretical model.