Experimental study on the loading characteristics of needlefelt filters with micrometer-sized monodisperse aerosols

In this work, three types of needlefelt filters, made of Polyester (PE), Ry ton Sulfar (RS), and Polyaramid (PA), were tested to investigate the aeroso l loading characteristics of fabric filters when challenged with micrometer -sized monodisperse potassium sodium tartrate (PST) particles, A fibrous fi lter with packing density of 9 %, thickness of 0.38 mm, and fiber diameter of 5.1 mum was included for comparison. A vibrating orifice monodisperse ae rosol generator was used to produce three different sizes (5, 10, and 20 mu m) of PST particles for aerosol loading experiment. An ultrasonic atomizing nozzle and a TSI constant output nebulizer were used to generate polydispe rse PST particles for the aerosol penetration test. The aerosol penetration of submicrometer-sized particles through the filters was measured by using a Scanning Mobility Particle Sizer. An Aerodynamic Particle Sizer was used to measure the penetration fraction of aerosol particles larger than 0.8 m um The pressure drop across the filter was monitored by using pressure tran sducers, which were calibrated against an inclined manometer. Airflows of 5 , 10, 20, and 30 cm/s were used to study the flow dependency. The aerosol p enetration results showed that the particles larger than 3 mum did not pene trate the clean fabric filters tested in the present study. The loading cur ves (plots of pressure drop against sampling time) displayed three regions: an initial region of fast increase, a transition region, and a final linea r region after the dust formation point. After the formation point of the d ust cake, both fabric and fibrous filters shared the same slope (of the loa ding curves). The slope of different regions of the loading curves was dete rmined by many factors, such as size of challenge aerosol, face velocity, s urface treatment, and the compressibility of the dust cake forming on the f ilter, The method of final surface treatment was found to be critical to th e performance of the fabric filters, In order to avoid the unnecessary rise in air resistance, the melting clumps formed during final surface treatmen t should be as thin and narrow as possible, just enough to support the filt er bag cleaning. From the standpoint of filter quality and energy consumpti on, the low filtration velocity has to be adopted whenever possible, becaus e high filtration velocity not only led to lower filter quality (in particu lar for submicrometer-sized particles) but also created dust cake of lower porosity, which caused an extra rise in pressure drop across the dust cake.