Numerical modeling of near corona wire electrohydrodynamic flow in a wire-plate electrostatic precipitator

Numerical modelling of the flow velocity fields for the near corona wire electrohydrodynamic (EHD) flow was conducted. Solutions of the steady, two-dimensional momentum equations have been computed for a wire-plate type electrostatic precipitator (ESP). The equations were solved in the conservative finite-difference form on a fine uniform rectilinear grid of sufficient resolution to accurately capture the momentum boundary layers. The numerical procedure for the differential equations was used by SIMPLEST [1] algorithm. The CFD code [2], coupled with Poisson's electric field, ion transport equations and the momentum equation with electric body force, was used for the numerical simulation with the Chen-Kim k -epsilon turbulent model. The numerical results show that EHD secondary flow was clearly visible in the downstream regions of the corona wire despite the low Reynolds number for the electrode (Re-CW=12.4). Secondary flow vortices caused by the EHD increases with increasing discharge current or EHD number, hence pressure drop of ESP increases.