Effects of humidity, temperature, and nanofibers on drop coalescence in glass fiber media

Compressed air is used in a variety of industrial applications. For many of these applications the air must be treated to remove undesired contaminants such as solid particles and droplets of oil and water. Glass fiber filter media are often used to remove the oil droplets out of the compressed gas. This paper describes an experimental study to explore the effects of humidity and temperature on the performance of the glass fiber filter media. This work also considers the effects of the addition of polymer nanofibers to the glass fiber media on the filter performance. The results show that generally at higher temperatures the glass fiber media have better coalescence filtration performance. The glass fiber media also performed better with a humidity dewpoint of - 15 degreesC compared with dewpoints of -10 and - 20 degreesC, suggesting that there may be competing mechanisms affected by the humidity. The coalescence performance of the media improved significantly when nanofibers were added to the glass fiber media. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.