<p>Pollution problems have drawn worldwide awareness and become significantly
important now. Particulate matter (PM) emission is one of the key pollution issues.
Particulate matter has a significant impact on the environment and human health,
especially particle sizes that range below 10μm. Researches continuously work an
improvement of fine particulate matter collections emitted from all kinds of sources, such
as automobiles, industrial combustion, etc. Governments in many countries are planning
to regulate the PM emission from the existing PM_10 (particle diameter<10μm) to new
limits PM_2.5 (particle diameter<2.5μm) within the next few years. For this reason, present
PM control system needs to be improved.</p><p>The objective of this work is to develop a dust flow separator type electrostatic
precipitator (DFS-ESP) for the effective control of fine particulate matter emission from
natural gas combustions. The characteristic of PM emitted from natural gas combustion is
studied, and the performance of a DFS-ESP is evaluated by experiments and numerical
predictions.</p><p>An experiment was conducted for natural gas combustion exhaust flow rates from
2.5 to 9 Nm^3/h, ESP applied voltages from 0 to 30kV, and gas temperature from 80 to
160°C. A series of particle measurements were conducted at upstream, downstream and
middle of the DFS-ESP system by an optical particle counter for particle mass density,
and by condensation nucleate particle counter for particle size distributions and particle number density. Particle sampled from the natural gas combustion system was also
analyzed by an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) technique. Flow
velocity profile and pressure drop of the DFS-ESP were measured by a Pitot tube and
diaphragm type pressure transducer, respectively.</p><p>The experimental results show that the particle size emitted from natural gas
combustion ranges from 17 to 300nm in diameter, and the volume density is
approximately from 5 x 10^8 #pt/m^3 to 5 x 10^9 #pt/m^3 depending on the combustion
conditions. The dust flow separator can concentrate 90% of fine particles in 1 to 3% of
the gas flow and divert it from the main flow to the ESP section where the particles can
be removed. In terms of overall particle collection efficiency, the DFS-ESP system can
remove up to 90% of the particles based on the number density. The pressure drop across
the DFS-ESP is observed to be lower than lPa for the present range of flow rate, which is
within acceptable limits for industrial applications.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21886 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Guan, Lili |
| Contributors | Chang, J. S., Engineering Physics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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