Modeling and Simulation of Coalescence in the Context of Oil Mist Filtration

Abstract

Today, aerosols are generated in many industrial processes like machining or in pneumatic compressors. The harmfulness of these droplets often lies in the liquid itself, as it can be toxic or cancerous while exhaled natural aerosols can carry pathogens. For health protection, the filtration of these aerosols is an important task. The wetting properties of the fibers have a large influence on the filtration efficiency and coalescence of droplets on the fibers. Oleophilic fibers are better in capturing the oil particles, while drainage increases using oleophobic fibers. For improved efficiency and drainage properties, a mixed-wet fiber system could therefore be advantageous. Describing droplet capture and coalescence in filter-scale simulations is computationally extremely demanding. We present a new approach for simulating oil mist deposition and droplet coalescence, specifically accounting for the wettability of the fibers, especially for mixed-wet filter media. The aim is to gain a more realistic pressure loss of a fibrous filter structure which takes the presence of the filtered phase into account as well as the coalescence of the liquid phase on the fibers depending on the wettability and the fluid parameters. Our approach is to model the shape of deposited droplets via weighted distance maps, according to the contact angles. Starting from a sphere, the shape is fitted on the solid surface such that the contact angle is met. For validation purposes, volume-of-fluid-based simulations were set up using the same droplet-fiber system as a reference to compare the droplet shape and pressure loss in the presence of oil droplets on the fiber surface.