As a side kick I came up w/ a wet scrubber / air purifier design using trapped charged water droplets.
I'm thinking about building a proof of concept but would like the community's feedback.
Schematic attached.
Existing scrubbers mix pretreat gas stream w/ liquid droplets and then collect the dirty droplets via a cyclone, mist condenser, or charged plates (for charged droplets).
My idea is to use an ion trap to hold a cloud of charged scrubbing droplets stationary against the gas influx.
This "scrubber cloud" essentially acts as a air filter but w/ much less pressure drop.
At the same time we're conserving scrubbing liquid usage and dramatically reducing reactor volume compared to a wet scrubber.
- The ion trap can simply be 2 mesh screens separated by voltage diff on order of few kV
- Droplets hundreds of microns
- Flow velocity a few m/s
- Charge per droplet a few uC
- Back of env calc shows electric field force can counter air drag thereby trapping the droplets.
Over time droplets get dirty, coalesce, and may leave the trap. Then they can be captured via gravity or a demister downstream
What are your thoughts?
Thanks!
