Modeling Mass Transfer and Nanoparticle Capture in Electrostatically Charged Monolith Filters

Analyzing trajectories of particles in monolith filters is important for predicting the capture efficiency and improving the design of this class of filters. Modeling and simulations of the particle trajectories are carried out to evaluate the probability of capture by the filter’s front surface and filter channel’s inner wall. Due to Brownian motion and electrostatic attraction, the particles exhibit a random walk and their trajectories deviate from the streamlines of the fluid flow. Particle trajectories are computed by the integration of Newton’s second law, where the electrostatic force, the Brownian motion force resulting from random collisions of the particle with air molecules, and the drag force from the surrounding fluid are all taken into account. A computer simulation for computing the particle trajectories and evaluating the probability of particle capture by the filter was developed. For this model, both flow field and electric field must be provided. The electric charge was assumed to be uniformly distributed along the edge of the channels of the filter and calculated numerically. The flow field is difficult to obtain due to the complex geometry of the model. The commercial CFD package ANSYS CFX [1] is used to compute the flow field. The resulting velocity flow field is then used to evaluate the drag force on the particles. We assume a one-way coupling between the fluid flow and the particle motion. Although there can be over one million uniformly distributed channels per square centimeter in the monolith filter, for simulation purposes, a single unit cell which models only one channel is used. The single unit model effectively describes the behavior of particles outside and inside the channels of monolith filter. The effects of different forces and different particle sizes were analyzed to investigate which factors affect the capture efficiency.