ICESP X – Australia 2006

Paper 7B3

A NUMERICAL MODEL OF A WIRE-PLATE ELECTROSTATIC

PRECIPITATOR UNDER ELECTROHYDRODYNAMIC FLOW
CONDITIONS

L. ZHAO1, E. DELA CRUZ2, K. ADAMIAK1*, A.A. BEREZIN 2, J.S.

CHANG2
1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Western Ontario,
London, Ontario, Canada
2
Department of Engineering Physics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
*Phone: 1-519-661-2111 ext.88358, Fax: 1-519-850-2436
E-mail: kadamiak@eng.uwo.ca

ABSTRACT
A new numerical model for the electric field and gas flow in a wire-plate electrostatic
precipitator with a single corona wire is presented. The electrical conditions in the
precipitator channel are simulated by solving a full two-dimensional single-species model of
the electric corona discharge. The electric field and space charge density are predicted by
simultaneously solving the electric field and charge transport equations using a hybrid Finite
Element – Method of Characteristics numerical algorithm. The electric Coulomb force
generates the secondary electrohydrodynamic flow of air, which modifies the main gas flow.
This part is simulated by solving the Navier-Stokes equation, using the FLUENT -
commercial CFD computer software. The numerical results for the electric field distribution,
ion density, and flow pattern are shown for different values of non-dimensional numbers
characterizing the process. The flow pattern generated by the EHD effect is asymmetric with
respect of the transverse axis of ESP and generation of the forward wake can be observed, if
the non-dimensional Ehd number is larger than 1710.

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INTRODUCTION
In the industrial electrostatic precipitators (ESPs), the dust particles, charged by ionic
bombardment in the monoionized electric field generated due to the electric corona discharge,
experience the Coulomb force and drift towards the collecting plates, where they are
deposited. Most ESPs have dust collection efficiency higher than 99% in terms of mass.
Unfortunately, the remaining 1% of non-collected dust consists mainly submicron particles,
which are hazardous for human health. It has been recognized that the fine particle collection
efficiency is affected by the electrohydrodynamic flow produced by corona discharge,
although some authors argued with this and suggest a different explanation. For example,
Soldati (2000) concluded: “the overall collection efficiency of the precipitator is not
significantly affected by the presence of EHD flows. Even in the vicinity of the wall, EHD
flows appear to have negligible influence on particle deposition”.

Kallio and Stock (1992) found from their experimental and simulation investigations that the
EHD flow exists in ESPs as a very complex flow phenomenon, which strongly depends upon
the corona discharge and precipitator inlet velocity. Yabe et al. (1978) and Blanchard at al.
(2001) visualized a vigorous well-organized roll- like secondary flow in the precipitation
channel, and they found that the velocity of this secondary flow could be in the order of
several meters per second. Yamamoto and Velkoff (1981) were ones of few authors who
during 1980s’ gave relatively detailed experimental and theoretical explanation of 2D and 3D
EHD flows. They tried to prove that the effect of EHD flow on the ESP performance appears
to be significant, and that the EHD flow tends to reduce the transport of the dust particles
towards the plate upstream of the corona wire, while enhancing it downstream of the corona
wire. The experimental results obtained by Chang et al. (2005) and Podlinski et al. (2006)
showed that the dust particle collection was influenced by the EHD flow when the Ehd
number is greater than the square of the Reynolds number. Liang (1994) got a similar
conclusion from the numerical simulation: the ionic wind effect can decrease the collection
efficiency by about 12% when the main flow velocity is smaller than 0.23m/s. Although
many studies, including the mentioned above, have been performed for understanding the
EHD flow in ESPs, its interaction with the main gas flow and its effect on the trajectories of
fine particles, further investigations and more discussions are needed before widely accepted
conclusions are reached.

The goal of our research is to simulate the corona discharge and the airflow in the
electrostatic precipitator, in order to provide more detailed insights into these two fields. A
more accurate and efficient approach has been used than reported before; first we use the
hybrid Finite Element (FEM) – Method of Characteristics (MOC) method to simulate the
corona discharge, and then the commercial CFD software FLUENT is adopted to calculate
the flow pattern of the precipitation channel.

MATHEMATICAL MODEL
The ESP studied in this paper consists of a thin corona discharge wire and two parallel
grounded collecting plates 60cm wide and 10cm apart. The corona wire is a cylinder with a
diameter of 1mm and is placed in the center and parallel to the plates. Assuming that all
electrodes are infinitely long, a 2-D computation model can be considered, as shown in Fig.1.
The air flows in the negative y direction with the velocity of 0.2m/s, and the simulation
domain is -0.05<x<0.05 and -0.3<y<0.3.
There are two distributions involved in the precipitation process, the electric and the airflow
fields, which have to be calculated simultaneously. As discussed in our previous paper (Zhao
and Adamiak 2005a), the governing equations for the electric field are:

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Numerical Model of Electrostatic Precipitator
 q
∇ 2Φ = − (1)
ε0

q2
∇q ⋅ ∇Φ = (2)
ε0
where Φ is the scalar electric potential, q - the space charge density, ε 0 - the permittivity of
ambient gas.

Under the assumption that the ambient air is incompressible, has constant density and
viscosity, and the flow is laminar, the airflow has to satisfy the continuity equation

∇ ⋅u = 0 (3)

and the Navier-Stokes equation:

∂u
ρf[ + (u ⋅ ∇) u] = −∇P + η∇ 2u + F (4)
∂t
where u is air velocity, ρf - the gas density, P - the static pressure, η - the air viscosity, F -
the body force, in this case equal to the Coulomb force q∇Φ .

The dimensionless parameters have been defined according to the recommendations made by
IEEE-DEIS-EHD Technical Committee (2003),

LU 0
Re = ;
vf
L3 I
Ehd = 2 0 (5)
v f ρ f ki A
ε E 2 L2
Md = 0 0 2
ρf v f

where Re is the Reynolds number, Ehd - the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) number, Md - the
Masuda number, L (m) - the characteristic length, U0 (m/s) - the mean gas velocity, ?f (m2 /s) -
the gas kinematic viscosity, I0 (A) - the discharge current, ?f (kg/m3 ) - the gas density, k i
=1.8e-4 (m2 /Vs) - the ion mobility, E0 (V/m) - Peek’s value for the critical electric field, A
(m2 ) - the electrode surface area used to calculate the discharge current.

In a non-dimension form the governing Equations (1-4) then became

Ehd *
∇ 2Φ* = − q (1’)
Md

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Numerical Model of Electrostatic Precipitator
 Ehd *2
∇q * ⋅ ∇Φ * = q (2’)
Md
∇ ⋅ u* = 0 (3’)
∂u * 1 2 * Ehd * *
+ (u * ⋅ ∇)u * = −∇P * + ∇ u + 2 qE (4’)
∂t *
Re Re

For a given configuration of the precipitator the Reynolds number is controlled by the gas
velocity. The Ehd and Masuda numbers are not independent as both are functions of the
corona electrode voltage, its diameter and the gas ionization characteristics.

NUMERICAL ALGORITHM
Using the commercial software GAMBIT 2.2, the calculation domain was discretized into
40590 triangular elements and 20489 nodes with a fine mesh close to the thin corona wire
and a coarser one near the plates. The electric field and space charge density are predicted by
simultaneously solving Poisson’s and charge transport equations using a hybrid Finite
Element – Method of Characteristics numerical algorithm, which has been discussed in detail
by Adamiak and Atten (2004). This part was coded as a User-Defined-Function (UDF) of the
commercial CFD software FLUENT 6.2. All distributed parameters of corona discharge: the
space charge density, current density, electric field and potential at every point in the
simulation domain, as well as global parameters, such as I-V characteristics, can be obtained.
The FLUENT software also was used to perform the numerical simulation of airflow (Eqs. 3
and 4), which has been modified by the EHD flow produced by corona discharge. This stage
of calculation can provide detailed information on the airflow, such as stream functions, path
lines, velocity and pressure distributions and others.

SIMULATION RESULTS
Electrical Conditions
The potential and the space charge density distributions, for the voltage applied to the corona
wire equal to -29kV and the airflow velocity 0.2m/s, are presented in Figs. 2 and 3. The
potential contours (Fig. 2) are shown with 1kV difference between any two adjacent lines; in
the vicinity of the corona wire they are dense with the circular shape. They are much sparser
with the shape gradually changing to ellipse when moving towards the ends of the
precipitation channel. This means that very high electric field is produced in the region close
to the corona wire and the corona discharge takes place around the whole wire surface, not
just at points facing the ground plates.

Figure 3 shows the space charge density contours: the maximum value of 171.8 µC/m3 is
located on the surface of the corona wire and then the charge density rapidly decreases
moving away from the electrode surface. Most of the space charge is concentrated in the area
close to the corona wire. The charging level depend s on the magnitude of the electric field,
while the charging rate is also affected by the space charge. Close to the corona wire is the
region where the dust particles very quickly achieve most of their charge. They also
experience strong Coulomb force acting towards the grounded collecting plates.

Air Flow Patterns For Different values of Ehd Number

The inlet gas velocity of the investigated precipitator has been assumed to be equal to 0.2m/s.
In this case, the wire-based Reynolds number is 13.7, if the corona wire diameter is 1mm and

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the gas kinematic viscosity is 1.46e-5 m2 /s. Several cases with different Ehd numbers, as
shown in Table 1, have been simulated in order to investigate the effect of EHD flow on the
main gas pattern. For these seven cases, the Ehd number increases with the increase of the
applied voltage and the related space charge density on the corona wire, however the
Reynolds number stays the same.

Table 1. Space charge density on the wire surface and the values of Ehd number for different
corona wire voltages.

0kV 20kV 22kV 25kV 27kV 29kV 32kV

3
Q0 (uC/m ) 0 22.6 39.3 88.1 128 172 248.8
Ehd (wire) 0 437 763 1710 2478 3331 4822

Figure 4 (a to g) displays the streamline patterns for different Ehd numbers according to
Table 1. When the Ehd number equals to zero (Fig. 4a), no EHD flow exists in the channel
and the main gas flow dominates in the whole channel. For relatively small Ehd numbers
(Fig. 4b), when the applied voltage is slightly above the onset level, the corona discharge is
weak, so is the EHD flow: only two tiny vortices appear in the upwind and very close to the
corona wire. When the applied voltage further increases (Fig. 4c), the Ehd number increases
too, and the EHD flow shows small effect in the downwind side - an oscillating thin jet is
generated. In the case d) the Ehd number is larger than 1000. The EHD flow begins to affect
the whole flow pattern: there are two large vortices close to the collecting plates and
downwind oscillations become wider. In the cases from e) to g) the flow continues its
evolution with two upwind vortices growing bigger, while the downwind oscillations
eventually form two larger vortices. In the case shown in Fig. 4g, four large stable vortices
have been fully developed, the effect of the EHD flow is not a near-wire phenomenon
anymore, but the whole flow pattern has been modified into a totally different one.

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a numerical model for the wire-duct electrostatic precipitator has been
presented with the brief discussion of some initial simulation results, including the potential
and the space charge density contours and the flow patterns at different applied voltages. For
a constant Reynolds number, the effect of EHD flow on the main gas flow in the precipitation
channel depends on the value of the Ehd number: the higher the Ehd number, the greater the
effect. When the Ehd number reaches a certain value, four large vortices become visible.
This re-circulating flow may change the trajectories of fine particles, bringing them back to
the center of the channel, and preventing them from being collected on the plates. This might
be the reason why most of the fine particles escape from the precipitator, what will be
verified by further including the particle transportation into our model. The presented model
is also suitable for more complex geometries as well, for example assuming multiple wires of
different shapes, and can provide simulation results for the air velocity and the pressure
distributions, or flow patterns for different values of the Reynolds number.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
of Canada (NSERC).

REFERENCES
Adamiak K. and Atten P. (2004). Simulation of corona discharge in point-plane
configuration, J.of Electrostatics, 61, 85-98, 2004.

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Blanchard D., Dumitran L.M. and Atten P. (2001). Effect of electro-aero-dynamically
induced secondary flow on transport of fine particles in an electrostatic precipitator, J.of
Electrostatics, 51-52, 212-217, 2001.
Chang J.S., Dekowski J., Podlinski J., Brocilo D., Urashima K., Mizeraczyk J. (2005).
Electrohydrodynamic gas flow regime map in a wire-plate electrostatic precipitator,
Conference Record of the 2005 IEEE Industry Applications Society, Ho ng Kong, 2597 –
2600, Oct. 2005.
IEEE-DEIS-EHD Technical Committee (2003). Recommended international standard for
dimensionless parameters used in electrohydrodynamics. IEEE Trans. on Dielectrics and
Electrical Insul., 10, 3-6, 2003.
Kallio G.A. and Stock D.E. (1992). Interaction of electrostatic and fluid dynamic fields in
wire-plate electrostatic precipitators, J.Fluid.Mech, 240, 133-166, 1992.
Liang W.-J. and Lin T.H. (1994). The characteristics of ionic wind and its effect on
electrostatic precipitators, Aerosol Science and Technology, 20, 330-344, 1994.
Podlinski J., Dekowski J., Mizeraczyk J., Brocilo D. and Chang J.S. (2006)
Electrohydrodynamic gas flow in a positive polarity wire-plate electrostatic precipitator and
the related dust particle collection efficiency, J. of Electrostatics, 64, 259-262, 2006.
Soldati A. (2000). On the effects of electrohydrodynamic flows and turbulence on aerosol
transport and collection in wire-plate electrostatic precipitators, J.Aerosol Sci. 31, 3, 293-
305, 2000.
Yabe A., Mori Y. and Hijikata K. (1978). EHD study of the corona wind between wire and
plate electrodes, AIAA J., 16, 4, 340-345, 1978.
Yamamoto T. and Velkoff H.R. (1981). Electrohydrodynamics in an electrostatic
precipitator, J.Fluid Mech, 108, 1-18, 1981.
Zhao L. and Adamiak K. (2005a). EHD flow in air produced by electric corona discharge in
pin-plate configuration, J. of Electrostatics, 63, 337-350, 2005.
Zhao L. and Adamiak K. (2005b). EHD Gas Flow in Electrostatic Levitation Unit, Proc. of
4eme Conference SFE, Poitiers, France, 272-277, September 2-3, 2004.

0. 6m

0. 1m
corona wi r e y
ai r f l ow
pl at e

x
Figure 1: 2D computational model of electrostatic precipitator

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Numerical Model of Electrostatic Precipitator
 Figure 2 Equipotential lines distribution in the electrostatic precipitator for the corona wire
voltage equal to –29 kV

Figure 3 Lines of equal space charge density for the electrode voltage –29 kV

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Numerical Model of Electrostatic Precipitator
 (a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

(f)

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 (g)
Figure 4. Airflow streamlines in the electrostatic precipitator for Re=13.7 and different Ehd
numbers

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ICESP X – June 2006
Numerical Model of Electrostatic Precipitator