This study aims to
evaluate the dust removal efficiency
and working
conditions of a filter separator through a pressure drop under various
operating conditions. Typical horizontal filter separators in natural
gas stations were taken as the research objects, and the computational
fluid dynamics method was first attempted to investigate the static
and dynamic characteristics of the pressure drop and the dust removal
efficiency under different operating times and pressures. Then, the
simulated results were compared with those obtained from online dust
detection. At a constant standard flow rate, the detected pressure
drop deviated from the fitted optimal quadratic curve with an increase
in the operation duration of the filter separator, and the dust removal
efficiency also tended to decline. The declining trend was particularly
faster at lower operating pressures caused by the fast air flow, which
leads to more coalesced particles flowing out and increases the dust
concentration downstream. A higher initial pressure drop of the filter
separator was also maintained at a low operating pressure. The dust
removal efficiency rapidly decreased at a higher throughput load,
and the decreasing rate became moderate at a lower input load. An
optimum operating throughput of the filter was obtained when the input
load varied in the range of 100 × 104–270 ×
104 Nm3/d. Good agreement was achieved between
the simulated and experimental dust removal efficiency, and the relative
errors are within ±20%. Both methods applied in this work were
verified to have high accuracy and reliability through the actual
on-site amount of dust captured.