Experimental Study on the Atomization Characteristics of an Aerosol Spray Nozzle

Abstract

Inlet air filtration is an important part of the intake systems of the ships and coastal installations which filters out the salt aerosol particles to improve the intake air quality. Experimental systems for the inlet filter should include the salt aerosol nozzle, and the nozzle should be capable of generate various kinds of salt aerosol particles with different diameters since the sea salt aerosol possess many sizes particles in the marine environment. This paper experimentally investigates the effect of two design parameters, droplet mass flow rate and inlet pressure, on the particle diameter distribution of salt aerosol generating device. When the droplet mass flow rate increases, the research findings indicate that the particle sizes produced by the employed aerosol spray nozzle become larger. On the other hand, with the growing inlet pressure, the sizes of the sprayed particles become smaller. The results show that there are two methods to diminish the sizes of aerosol particles and improve the performance of the nozzle, one is increasing the air inlet pressure and the other is decreasing the droplet mass flow rate. And the former method gives better results than the latter method with respect to the improvement of the atomization performance.