Research of the effect of different corrugated dust collection plates on particle removal in electrostatic precipitators

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-physics field coupled model of electric, flow and particle fields was constructed by COMSOL to compare the effects of three different corrugated dust collector plates on electric field distribution, airflow field, particle trajectories and dust removal efficiency in an electrostatic precipitator, and to compare them with a conventional electrostatic precipitator with a parallel plate structure. The results indicated that the corrugated dust collection plate influenced the electric field within the ESP channel, while the wire plate spacing directly affected the size and distribution of space charge density. Furthermore, the corrugated dust collection plate also affected the EHD flow within the channel, with the D2-ESP and D3-ESP being the most strongly influenced by the ionic wind. By comparing the dust removal efficiency of the four ESPs, we found that D2-ESP has the highest dust removal efficiency, followed by D3-ESP, then Flat-ESP, and finally D1-ESP. The ranking order of the four ESPs' dust removal efficiency is consistent with the ranking order of the space charge density within the four ESP channels, which shows that the size of the space charge density directly affects the dust removal efficiency of ESPs. Numerical simulation results show that the change of wire plate spacing is the main reason why corrugated ESP affects the dust removal efficiency of electrostatic precipitators.