The Effect of an External AC or DC Electric Field on Collision and Agglomeration in an Electrostatic Agglomerator

This article simulated the collision and agglomeration between bipolarly charged particles in an electrostatic agglomerator. The El-ID turbulent flow was solved and the flow parameters were extracted a priori. The particle initial charge was obtained by tracking particles with a certain diameter in the charging zone. When simulating collision and agglomeration in the agglomerating zone, the initial charge on a particle was sampled from the charge distribution by statistical analysis. The classical stochastic model for calculating collision between neutral particles was extended to calculate collision between charged particles, and the effect of particle charge on collision and agglomeration was embodied in the agglomeration criteria. The effect of an external DC and AC electric field on the collision and agglomeration was investigated.