Smart Home Precipitator for Biomass Furnaces: Design Considerations on a Small-Scale Electrostatic Precipitator

With the use of wood pellets becoming more popular for heating in private households, an increase in particulate matter problems across urban areas has been detected. As this contributes to significant health risks, effective reduction of dust emissions will become mandatory even for comparably small heating systems. The smart home precipitator was designed for this scope of application. This paper demonstrates the development steps aiming at a cost-effective precipitator that can be used for central heating processes up to 30 kW. It starts with research on the mechanical design and on the collection efficiency for the development of a space-saving structure with comparable large collection area. In a next step, two different circuit topologies for the high-voltage power supply have been analyzed. The latest and final work step in the design phase was the development of a smart and efficient control algorithm using fuzzy logic for dynamic optimization.