Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1990. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-123). Also available via the Internet.

Electrostatic precipitators (ESP’s) can be simply described as particle collection devices and service a wide variety of industries. This particle collection can either be classed as a cleansing or product recovery (or both) process. They can be found in fossil fueled power generation plant (municipal incinerators, iron and steel industries (sinter plants, coke ovens), non ferrous industries, rock products (cement, lime), chemical and petrochemical (detarrers, de-oilers) They have been around for approximately 70 years and their fundamental principle of operation has not changed much during this time. What has changed is the demand on their operating efficiency. Environmental pressure as well as the loss of product has forced ESP’s to perform even better than before. This performance enhancement is two-fold : an increase in collection efficiency and a reduction in maintenance and wear costs. This project researches the use of mass measurement techniques to optimise the operation of ESP’s from both the above mentioned perspectives.

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This work was carried out to investigate the mechanisms of solid-solid separation in electrostatic precipitators. The separation of mixture of pure compounds from each other and the components of an industrial dust has been studied in a wire-and-duct type laboratory-scale electrostatic precipitator. Particle size distribution affected the separation most, but both the dielectric constant and electrical resistivity of the dust can be important. Operating voltage and air velocity in the precipitator also affected the separation along the precipitator length. The SRI computer model of precipitator performance gave reasonable predictions of separation under conditions of negligible re-entrainment. / An apparently unique relationship between separation and recovery was experimentally observed with components which do not re-entrain appreciably; a similar behaviour is theoretically predicted from the Deutsch Equation of collection efficiency or the SRI model.

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