Study on the Behavior of Droplet in Air-Water Separator

The air-water separator in this study is based on the principle of the electrostatic precipitator with the positive and negative poles, which has been widely utilized to collect the dust contained in flue gas exhausted from the industrial plants such as coal fired power station. This mechanism of separation is that the Coulomb force operating between the both poles collects the water droplets charged negative ions by corona discharge on the surface of positive pole.The cylindrical separator by the Coulomb force used here consists of a stainless tube of φ57.2mm and length of 154mm as positive pole, and a stainless wire of φ1.0mm as negative pole. The experiments were carried out at 0 m/s without water droplets and 4.0m/s with and without water droplets in mean air velocity, and at 0 to 17kV in DC high voltage.And, the theoretical analyses also were done using the data under the same conditions as those used in the experiment.Consequently, the behavior of a water droplet flowing in the separator and existing between two electrodes is made clear to determine the basic equations of motion for a water droplet and the distribution of dielectric constant. And, the theoretical length to collect whole droplets in the separator by the Coulomb force can be estimated and agrees with the length obtained by the experiments.