An experimental study of triboelectrostatic particle charging behavior and its associated fundamentals

Abstract

Triboelectrostatic separation is a unique dry particle separation process that has been applied to many industrial applications. However, little attention has been directed to the process of charge transfer during the particle collision and friction which is critical for the success of triboelectrostatic separation. The present study has been conducted to quantify the effects of particle size, collision speed, contact mode (collision or friction), etc. on the charge density, surface potential, morphology, etc. of quartz particles based on macroscopic triboelectrostatic charge measurements and microscopic atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterization. The macroscopic charging performance results showed that the charge to mass ratio of quartz particles depended on process parameters such as feed rate and charger rotation speed and the highest charge to mass ratio reached −56.21 μC/g. The microscopic AFM characterization data reveals that the increase in particle size and collision velocity fundamentally enhanced the triboelectrostatic charging process. The surface potential of quartz increased from −60.60 mV to −477.15 mV with increasing PVC particle size from 280 μm to 1250 μm and similar behavior was observed with increasing the collision velocity from 0.99 m/s to 2.62 m/s. The change in contact mode only changed the magnitude of charge transfer but did not change the polarity of charged particle. The process of charge transfer was accompanied with the change of surface morphology and the degree of change in surface morphology was not directly related to the amount of charge transfer.