Production of Well-Controlled Laminar Aerosol Jets and Their Application for Studying Aerosol Combustion Processes

Abstract

Generation of steady-state solid aerosol jets with controllable parameters is often necessary in experimental studies and industrial processes. Most of the current approaches use a fluidized bed to produce an aerosol flow and always introduce initial turbulence into the jet. Toproduce a laminar aerosol jet, flow straighteners and long tubes are used that make the design cumbersome and inflexible. In addition, in a fluidized bed-type system, the aerosol number density and gas flow rate are inherently interdependent. In a new apparatus described in this paper, metal aerosol is produced using an electrostatic recharging of particles in a DC electric field of a parallel plate capacitor, a so-called electrostatic particulate method. The powder is aerosolized within the capacitor without using any gas flows and only a small velocity, a laminar gas jet is used to carry the aerosol away from the chamber through a small nozzle made in the top plate of the capacitor. It is shown that the aerosol number density is c...