Numerical simulation of electrostatic field and flow field in an electro- static precipitator

Introduction: The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of three- dimensional wire-plate electrostatic precipitator is performed in the present study. Materials and methods: The momentum equation, the electric potential equation and current continuity equation are solved by using ANSYS Fluent. The ion charge density at the corona is calculated iteratively using the Peek formula. The SIMPLE algorithm is used to treat the pressure-velocity cou- pling. The RNG k-ε model is used to describe turbulence. Results: The airflow keeps stable away from the first corona electrode. The distribution of the electric potential is dependent on the wire-plate distance and the wire-wire distance. The potential and ion charge density increase with the increase of the wire-plate distance. With the increase of wire-wire dis- tance, the maximum electric field strength decreases whereas the maximum ionic charge density increases. The ion charge density near the second corona electrode is relatively small. A small wire-wire distance will make the electric field concentrated around the wires. Conclusion: According to this study, the wire-wire distance and the wire- plate distance have great effect on the distribution of ion charge density and electric field strength.