Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations

Filtration of particulate-laden airstreams is an important industrial process, undertaken for a combination of operational, environmental, safety and health reasons. The fundamentals of filtration are well-understood and these can serve as a basis for design where the filter is assumed clean, and wh...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: King, Andrew, Mullins, Benjamin, Lowe, A.
Other Authors: Kian Teh
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Engineers Australia 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9876
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author King, Andrew
Mullins, Benjamin
Lowe, A.
author2 Kian Teh
author_facet Kian Teh
King, Andrew
Mullins, Benjamin
Lowe, A.
author_sort King, Andrew
building Curtin Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Filtration of particulate-laden airstreams is an important industrial process, undertaken for a combination of operational, environmental, safety and health reasons. The fundamentals of filtration are well-understood and these can serve as a basis for design where the filter is assumed clean, and where it has a regular geometry. However, after a filter is has undergone a period of service, or for filters with complex fibre geometries, the application of these basic principles is often unsuccessful. For this reason it is desirable to fully simulate a filter design prior to manufacture in order to gauge both the initial and long term filter performance.This paper presents a coupled fluid and particle solver that can accurately model particulate filters, and allows their performance to be predicted. The solver is built on the open-source OpenFOAM Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software libraries, which are extended to include a physically accurate model for particle motion and capture. Results demonstrate that the particle motion is accurately modelled for a range of particle sizes, and allows the three major particle capturing mechanisms to be simulated - namely Brownian motion, interception, and inertial impact. A comparison between the performance calculated from Single Fibre Efficiency (SFE) theory and that predicted by the numerical model is presented and shows good agreement.To demonstrate the feasibility of conducting a realistic filter simulation using the developed code, the flow and particle capture behaviour of a representative filter geometry is presented. Future developments to the code are planned to combine discrete particle tracking with a multiphase volume of fluid model to predict filter behaviour of oil-mist filters, including coalescence and break-up.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-98762022-12-09T07:12:36Z Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations King, Andrew Mullins, Benjamin Lowe, A. Kian Teh Ian Davies Ian Howard OpenFOAM discrete particle tracking filtration CFD Filtration of particulate-laden airstreams is an important industrial process, undertaken for a combination of operational, environmental, safety and health reasons. The fundamentals of filtration are well-understood and these can serve as a basis for design where the filter is assumed clean, and where it has a regular geometry. However, after a filter is has undergone a period of service, or for filters with complex fibre geometries, the application of these basic principles is often unsuccessful. For this reason it is desirable to fully simulate a filter design prior to manufacture in order to gauge both the initial and long term filter performance.This paper presents a coupled fluid and particle solver that can accurately model particulate filters, and allows their performance to be predicted. The solver is built on the open-source OpenFOAM Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software libraries, which are extended to include a physically accurate model for particle motion and capture. Results demonstrate that the particle motion is accurately modelled for a range of particle sizes, and allows the three major particle capturing mechanisms to be simulated - namely Brownian motion, interception, and inertial impact. A comparison between the performance calculated from Single Fibre Efficiency (SFE) theory and that predicted by the numerical model is presented and shows good agreement.To demonstrate the feasibility of conducting a realistic filter simulation using the developed code, the flow and particle capture behaviour of a representative filter geometry is presented. Future developments to the code are planned to combine discrete particle tracking with a multiphase volume of fluid model to predict filter behaviour of oil-mist filters, including coalescence and break-up. 2010 Conference Paper http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9876 Engineers Australia restricted
spellingShingle OpenFOAM
discrete particle tracking
filtration
CFD
King, Andrew
Mullins, Benjamin
Lowe, A.
Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title_full Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title_fullStr Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title_full_unstemmed Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title_short Discrete Particle Tracking in Fluid Flows for Particulate Filter Simulations
title_sort discrete particle tracking in fluid flows for particulate filter simulations
topic OpenFOAM
discrete particle tracking
filtration
CFD
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/9876