Abstract
The paper presents a study of the deposition of submicron charged spherical particles caused by convection, Brownian and turbulent diffusion in a pipe with a smooth wall and with a cartilaginous ring wall structure. The model is supposed to describe deposition of charged particles in generation 0 (trachea) of the human respiratory airways. The flow is modeled with a SST-turbulence model combined with a convective-diffusion equation including electric field migration for the particles, and Poisson’s equation for the determination of the electrostatic potential in terms of the space-charge density of the particles. An approximate analytical solution is derived for the case of a smooth pipe which is used to verify the numerical solutions obtained from using the commercial software Comsol Multiphysics. Numerical results of deposition rates are also provided for the case of a pipe with a cartilaginous ring wall structure.
Highlights
Studies on particle transport of submicron particles are of high importance in the analysis of particle deposition in the respiratory airways, both for assessing health effects of inhaled toxic matter and for evaluating the efficacy of drug delivery with pharmaceutical aerosols
The space charge effect is predominant in the upper airways while the image charge effect dominates in the smaller airways
The convective-diffusion equation including effects from a concentration c of charged particles with charge q and the electrostatic electric field E is of the form
Summary
Studies on particle transport of submicron particles are of high importance in the analysis of particle deposition in the respiratory airways, both for assessing health effects of inhaled toxic matter and for evaluating the efficacy of drug delivery with pharmaceutical aerosols. Deposition of submicron charged particles in turbulent pipe flow with an application to the trachea of about 1μm, while lower deposition rates were found for ultra-fine particles. Studies by Åkerstedt[8] included the space charge effect for nanoparticles in the lower airways (generation>4) of the human lung in which the flow is laminar. The convective-diffusion equation including effects from a concentration c of charged particles with charge q and the electrostatic electric field E is of the form Which is the equation providing the connection between the space charge distribution and the electrostatic potential
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