The behaviour of electrostatic filters made of fibres or sheets arranged parallel to the airflow

Abstract

A theory has been developed for the capture of particles by both uniformly charged fibres and line-dipole fibres arranged parallel to the airflow. Fibres parallel to the airflow are shown to be consistently more efficient than fibres perpendicular to the airflow when both particles and fibres are charged. In the capture of charged particles by line-dipole fibres and the capture of neutral particles, the parallel fibre system is shown to be more efficient over short distances. The theory is extended to parallel plates and it predicts that parallel plates should perform consistently better than fibres in the capture of charged particles.