Effect of slip flow on pressure drop of nanofiber filters

Abstract

The slip flow effect is often brought out to explain the reduction in pressure drop for nanofiber filters. Kirsch, Stechkina, and Fuchs (1973) studied the slip flow effect on the pressure drop of fibrous filters consisting of micron fibers, and proposed an empirical equation to predict the dependence of the dimensionless drag, F, on the Knudsen number, Kn, with considering non-uniformity of fiber packing. However, their empirical equation was derived based on the experiments with filters consisting of micron fibers so that the empirical equation is not yet verified for nanofiber filters. In the present work, we used various commercially available nanofiber filters with various physical properties, and the pressure drop was measured at low pressures in order to examine the validity of the empirical equation. As a result, we found that the empirical equation is valid even for nanofiber filters with a large inhomogeneity factor at a large Kn up to 20.