Evaluation of the cold pipe precharger

A more rigorous approach was used to evaluate the performance of the cold pipe precharger for electrostatic precipitator applications. A menu-driven numerical simulation was developed that allows various precharger operating conditions and wire-pipe configurations to be input, so the charging zone in the interelectrode space is determined. The next step is to solve the flow field, which allows simulation of the charging time for a given charging zone. The Navier-Stokes equations, coupled with the body force (the product of electric field and space charge density), are solved to determine the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) field. This information enables the particle charge to be determined under given operating conditions. The computed size-dependent particle charge showed good agreement with the experimental data, and the model is capable of providing good evaluations of the precharger.<>