The electret filter is a potential component to remove airborne particles due to its high collection efficiency and low pressure drop. However, its filtration performance is gradually decreased by exposure to organic solvents, which limits the application of electret filters. The effect of ethanol exposure on the filtration performance of polypropylene electret filters was investigated experimentally to clarify the charge decay phenomenon in this study. Experimental results revealed that filter performance is strongly dependent upon the challenged mass and existing state of an ethanol solvent. The filter performance was drastically degraded by exposure to ethanol droplets generated from a solution with ethanol concentrations above 30%; however, it was maintained during exposure to ethanol vapors. This tendency was also seen in the surface potentials of the exposed filter media. In addition, we found that the critical challenging amount of ethanol droplets was in the vicinity of 0.045 g/cm 2 to neutralize a tested electret filter in this study.

The silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic filter is the most favorable component to remove particulate matter from hot flue gas due to its high filtration efficiency and high thermal durability. The effect of SiC powder size on the physical properties and filtration performance to prepare high-performance granular ceramic filter media was investigated in this study. Disk-type filter media were prepared by mixing ceramic components followed by physical compression and sintering. The porosity and average pore diameter in the filter media increased with increasing powder size. However, the mechanical strength decreased with increasing powder size, while it increased with increasing physical compressive force. The filter performance factor, q FM was introduced to evaluate the ceramic filter properties, and the SiC50 filter was the best of the ceramic filters prepared in this study. We also found that diffusion was a dominant collection mechanism for particles smaller than 0.7 mm, and direct interception and inertia were dominant collection mechanisms for particles larger than 0.7 mm in the SiC50 filter based on a single collector efficiency model. In addition, the predicted collection efficiencies showed reasonably good agreement with the experimental ones.

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