Filtration Performance Characteristics of Sticky Aerosol Using Calcium Hydroxide

This study examined the performance of removing aerosol upon a flow rate variable by agglomerating sticky aerosol with calcium hydroxide and removing cohesive aerosol through an experimental apparatus, simulating an actual painting booth. As a result of examining the performance of the filter by fixing the paint spray quantity, the calcium hydroxide input and the filtration area under variable flow rates of 5, 10, and 15 Nm3/min, we confirmed that the filter performance has long average aerosol removing intervals at the 5 Nm3/min flow rate. At the 5 Nm3/min flow rate, there is a low residual pressure drop trend and high fractional collection efficiency, and a high level of total collection efficiency is maintained at 99.42%. When the flow rate is less than 5 Nm3/min, the aerosol settling and experimentation was impossible. With this research, the optimal conditions for the use of sticky aerosol have been examined.

Residual Pressure Drop Using ePTFE Micro-Filtration Membrane as Filter Medium

Filtration medium is one of the most important parts of air-filtration. A Micro-filtration membrane made by expanded poly-tetra-fluoric-ethylene (ePTFE) was introduced in the dust removal process in our previous work. Compared with conventional fabric media, ePTFE membrane has many advantages, such as low residual pressure drop and high efficiency of dust removal, etc., because of its characteristics of micro-porous structure and slippery surface. More importantly, the useful life of ePTFE membrane is longer and the operating costs are lower during the surface-filtration process. In this paper, the residual pressure drop of the ePTFE micro-filtration membrane and conventional needle-felts fabric filtration medium were compared. The results clearly show that the residual pressure drop of the conventional filter medium increases after several filtration cycles, but that of the ePTFE membrane remains constant.