Performance and techno-economic evaluation of a high-efficiency electrospray cyclone

Abstract

"Nowadays, because of the global air pollution issue caused by fine dust, fine dust collection and removal technologies are crucial for enhancing living environments and human health. This research proposes a new pilot-scale electrospray cyclone (ESC) designed for the collection of submicron dust particles. The experimental apparatuses comprised a cyclone dust collector and an insulating tank. Initially, laboratory-scale single-nozzle visualization tests were conducted to investigate the droplets’ number and size under various operating conditions. Subsequently, based on the visualization research outcomes, electrospray module was inserted to the industrial cyclone, which was designated by ESC. Performance assessments of the pilot-scale ESC were conducted under diverse water flowrates, applied voltages and nozzle sizes. The capture efficiencies for PM10, PM2.5, and PM1.0 were measured up to 98.2%, 95.4%, and 90.3%, respectively. Both the environmental and economic viabilities of the newly-proposed ESC in this study were evaluated based on three aspects: 1) capacitive particle collection efficiency; 2) capacitive installation cost; and 3) rated power and operational cost. This evaluation method has been defined as the Levelized Cost of Precipitator (LCOP), and it is intended to assess the environmental and economic performance of 5-convenstional dust collectors. In these results, the ESC shows relatively high performance in terms of the environmental and economic aspects. Based on these indices, we assess that the ESC has one of the promising alternatives of commercial precipitators."