Demisting and water recovery from wet cooling tower by multi-field coalescence

Abstract

In this paper, a pulsed electric field (PEF) combining with superhydrophobic fibrous coalesce was investigated for demisting and water recovery from wet cooling tower. The water droplets initially coalesced and enlarged in the PEF which was non-uniform due to the arrangement of electrodes and almost of no effect on pressure drop, and then were captured by superhydrophobic microfibers. The results showed that the high duty cycle, frequency and voltage were beneficial to recovery water droplets from wet cooling tower. The water recovery efficiency of the device could reach 95.13%, which was 9.80% higher than that without the electric field applied, under the experiment conditions of the duty cycle 0.9, the frequency 500 Hz, the voltage 2 kV, the flow rate 4 m3/h and the total liquid water concentration in wet air 104.2 g/m3.