Acoustic agglomeration of power plant fly ash for environmental and hot gas cleanup

Emission of small particulates from coal‐fired power plants in the range of 0.5 to 5 μ results in particularly serious injury to the human respiratory system. Currently used environmental cleanup devices in power plants such as bag houses, electrostatic precipitators, wet scrubbers, and others are very efficient in removing particulates which are larger than about 2 μ in size, leaving by far the majority of these tiny particulates to be emitted into the air environment. Current regulations for effluent cleanup emphasize the mass removal without any attention to the particulate size. Acoustic agglomeration is a means of causing these tiny particulates to collide with one another, adhere, and thereby result in the formation of larger particles, thus removing the tiny particulates from the aerosol stream. In this manner, the efficiency of particle removal of the conventional removal devices can be substantially enhanced. This paper introduces some of the fundamental aspects of acoustic agglomeration theory a...