Internal flow simulation of an ESP air purifier using RANS flow field and Lagrangian tracking of aerosols

Internal flow simulation of an ESP air purifier using RANS flow field and Lagrangian tracking of aerosols

Goyal, Jatinder (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering)

Gerritsma, M.I. (mentor)
Vons, Vincent (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2019-10-17

The gradually increasing air pollution calls for more and more effective solutions. This master thesis is focused on the investigation of aerosol trajectories inside the agricultural purifier named `ASPRA Agro', developed at VFA Solutions. Various CFD simulations have been carried out using an open-source C++ toolbox named `OpenFOAM'. The flow field was solved by carrying out axisymmetric simulations using a pressure jump boundary condition for the perforated wall. The comparison with the experimental results reveals that the axisymmetric simulations can capture the radial velocity profile gradients closely, but there is a considerable difference in velocity values. This difference has been ascribed to various factors such as wall effect due to mounting the purifier on the stand during the experiment, suction pockets due to the joints between the perforated wall. For electrostatic simulations, a very fine mesh is required, due to large gradients near corona needles. An axisymmetric simplification has been made to reduce the required computational effort, which increases the current to twice the expected value. The increase in current directly increases the particle charge. However, particle trajectories are unaffected because of negligible contribution from the electrostatics, assuming particles to be one-way coupled with the flow and electrostatics. OpenFOAM tools developed during the thesis will help in future simulations and the results obtained will aid in the further development of the purifier.

CFD
OpenFOAM
Air purifier
Electrostatic Precipitators
RANS
Lagrangian particle tracking

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9f1f5612-6f15-47f8-9fb7-2f0239f5ead2

2024-11-30

Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 Jatinder Goyal