EWCE 435

Air Pollution & Control

Lecture 7

Instructor
Maj Kazi Shamima Akter, Ph.D
Department of EWCE, MIST
 Lecture Outline
Air Pollution Control References

• Atmospheric Removal • Sewage Disposal and Air

Processes Pollution Engineering – S.
K. Garg
• Engineered Systems for Air
Pollution Control • Air Pollution Control
Engineering– Noel de
Nevers
 Air Pollution Control
• The atmosphere possesses self cleansing properties, which
continuously clean and remove the pollutants from the
atmosphere under natural processes.

• The various natural properties, which continuously clean the

environment, automatically are:
 Dispersion
 Gravitational settling with or without flocculation of particles
 Absorption including washout and scavenging
 Rainout
 Adsorption

• All these processes, naturally occur periodically in the ambient

air, thereby removing or reducing the various pollutants
entering the air.

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 Atmospheric Removal of Air Pollutants
Dispersion
• Dispersion of pollutants by winds reduces the concentration of
air pollutants at one place, although in the strict sense, it does
not remove them from the environment as a whole.
• This mechanism is a diluting mechanism only.
• We have been stressing extremely hard on providing long
chimneys for causing effective dispersion of pollutants,
although however, in the strict sense, these long chimneys are
only a means of spreading our own pollutants around our
neighbors.
• The dispersion through long chimneys, therefore helps us in
diluting the air pollutants near their source only, and does not
reduce their long term undesirable effects on the community
as a whole.
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 Atmospheric Removal of Air Pollutants
Dispersion
• It has been estimated that SO2 emitted in other countries,
particularly in Great Britain, leads to acid rains in Sweden, whose
environment is found to contain 15 to 50% of transported outside
SO2.

Gravitational Settling
• Gravitational settling is the most important natural mechanism,
under which large heavy particles from the ambient air settle
down on buildings, trees, and other objects.
• This generally happens for the particles which are larger than 20
micro meter in size.
• This process also helps in removing flocculated particles formed
by uniting of smaller particles over larger particles, till a floc
particle, large and heavy enough to settle under gravity, is formed.
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 Atmospheric Removal of Air Pollutants
Absorption
• In the natural absorption process, the gaseous as well as
particulate pollutants from the air get collected in the rain or
mist, and may settle out with the moisture.

• This phenomenon takes place below the cloud level, when

falling raindrops absorb pollutants, and is also known as
washout or scavenging.

• The process does not help in removing particles smaller than

1 micro meter in size.

• The gaseous pollutants are removed in dissolved state with

moisture, either with or without chemical changes.

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 Atmospheric Removal of Air Pollutants
Rainout
• Rainout is the process involving precipitation above the cloud
level, where submicron particles present in the atmosphere in
the clouds, serve as condensation nuclei, around which drops
of water may form and fall out as raindrops.

• This phenomenon helps in increased rainfall and fog

formation in urban areas, containing huge quantities of such
particles, rising high above the cloud level.

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 Atmospheric Removal of Air Pollutants
Adsorption
• Adsorption is the phenomenon in which the gaseous, liquid or
solid pollutants present in the ambient air are kept attracted,
generally electrostatically, by a surface, where they are
concentrated and retained.

• Natural surfaces, such as soils, rocks, leaves, grass, buildings

and other objects can adsorb and retain pollutants.

• The particles may come in contact with such surfaces either

by gravitational settling or by inertial impaction, under which
the pollutants are carried to such surfaces by winds.

• Impaction is particularly effective for particles of size 10 to 15

micro meter.
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 Engineered Systems for Air Pollution Control
Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Design Principle
• Particulate removal devices operate basically on the principle
that a gas stream containing particles is passed through a
region where the particles are acted on by external forces or
caused to intercept obstacles, thereby separating them from
the gas stream.

• When acted upon by external forces, the particles acquire a

velocity component in a direction different from that of the gas
stream.

• In order to design a separation device based on particulate

separation by external forces, one must be able to compute
the motion of a particle under such circumstances.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Design Criteria
• A preliminary selection of suitable particulate emission control
systems is generally based on knowledge of four items:
 particulate concentration in the stream to be cleaned,
 size distribution of the particles to be removed,
 gas flow rate
 final allowable particulate emission rate
• Once the systems that are capable of providing the required
efficiencies at the given flow rates have been chosen, the
ultimate selection is generally made on the basis of the total
cost of construction and operation.
• The size of a collector, and therefore its cost, is directly
proportional to the volumetric flow rate of gas that must be
cleaned.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Wall Collection Devices
• The control devices, we will consider include -
 gravity settlers
 cyclone separators
 electrostatic precipitators

• These all function by driving the particles to a soli wall,

where they adhere to each other to form agglomerates that
can be remove from the collection device and disposed of.

• Although these devices look different from one another,

they all use the same general principle.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Gravity Settlers
• A gravity settler is simply a long chamber through which
the contaminated gas passes slowly, allowing time for the
particles to settle by gravity to the bottom.
• It is an old, unsophisticated device that must be cleaned
manually at regular intervals.
• But it is simple to construct, requires little maintenance,
and has some use in industries treating very dirty gases,
e.g., some smelters and metallurgical processes.
• Furthermore, the mathematical analysis for gravity settlers
is very easy; it will reappear in modified form for cyclones
and electrostatic precipitators.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
• Its cross-sectional
area (WH) is much
larger than that of the
duct approaching it or
leading the gas away
from it, so that the gas
velocity inside is much
lower than in either of
those two ducts.

• Baffles are used to spread the incoming flow evenly

across the settling chamber;
• Without baffle, most of the flow will go through the middle
and poor particle collection will result.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Behavior of Gravity Settlers
• To calculate the behavior of such a device, chemical
engineers generally rely on one of two models.
• Either we assume that the fluid going through is totally
unmixed (block flow or plug flow model) or we assume total
mixing, either in the entire device or in the entire cross
section perpendicular to the flow (mixed model).
• The observed behavior of nature most often falls between
these two simple cases.
• Both models are widely used in air pollution control device
calculations.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Behavior of Gravity Settlers
• For either block or mixed flow, the average horizontal gas
velocity in the chamber is
…….. (1)

• For the block flow model, the assumptions are -

 The horizontal velocity of the gas in the chamber is
equal to Vavg everywhere in the chamber.
 The horizontal component of the velocity of the particles
in the gas is always equal to Vavg
 The vertical component of the velocity of the particles is
equal to their terminal settling velocity due to gravity, Vt.
 If a particle settles to the florr, it stays there and is not re-
entrained.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Behavior of Gravity Settlers
• Consider a particle that enters the chamber some distance
h above the floor of the chamber.

• The length of time, the gas parcel will take to traverse the
chamber in the flow direction is
…….. (2)

• During that time, the particle will settle by gravity a

distance,
…….. (3)

• If this distance is greater than or equal to h (its original

distance above the floor), then it will reach the floor of the
chamber and be captured.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Behavior of Gravity Settlers
• Now we can further assume that all of the particles are of
same size, and distributed uniformly across the inlet of the
chamber, and they do not interact with one another.

• Then the fraction of particles that will be captured, which is

the fractional collection efficiency, is

…….. (4)

• Now substituting the term for terminal velocity from Stokes

Law,
…….. (5)

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Centrifugal Separators
• Gravity settlers have little practical industrial use because
they are ineffective for small particles.

• To use these devices, it is to find a substitute that is more

powerful than the gravity force that they use to drive the
particles to the collection surface.

• We know that centrifugal force is a pseudo-force that is

really the result of the body's inertia carrying it straight
while some other force makes it move in a curved path.

• It is convenient to use this pseudo-force for calculation

purposes.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Centrifugal Separators
• We obtained Stokes' law by equating the (gravitational
minus buoyant) force to the Stokes' form of the drag force.

• Normally we drop the buoyant term for particles in gases

because it is small.

• To obtain the centrifugal equivalent, we need only

substitute the centrifugal force for the gravitational force (or
the centrifugal acceleration for the gravitational
acceleration, since the masses are equal).

• We replace g by V2/r or by ω2r.

• Doing this poses a problem, because now there are two

velocities in the equation that are not the same.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Centrifugal Separators
• To avoid confusion, the terminal settling velocity in the
radial direction will be denoted as Vt and the velocity along
the circular path will be mentioned as VC.

• Figure 9.3 also shows another

Vt due to gravity (assuming
the axis of the circle is
vertical).

• As the centrifugal force is normally more than 100 times

the gravitational force, then this gravitational settling
velocity will be less than a hundredth of the centrifugal one
and can be ignored.
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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Types of Centrifugal Separators

• There are many types of

Centrifugal Separators, but the
most successful is called a
Cyclone Separator or simply a
Cyclone.

• It is probably the most widely

used particle collection device
in the world, especially in the
industrial plants.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Cyclone Separators
• A cyclone consists of a vertical
cylindrical body, with a dust outlet
at the conical bottom.
• The gas enters through a
rectangular inlet, normally twice
as high as it is wide, arranged
tangentially to the circular body of
the cyclone, so that the entering
gas flows around the
circumference of the cylindrical
body, not radially inward.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Cyclone Separators
• The gas spirals around the outer part of
the cylindrical body with a downward
component, then turns and spirals upward,
leaving through the outlet at the top of the
device.

• During the outer spiral of the gas the

particles are driven to the wall by
centrifugal force, where they collect, attach
to each other, and form larger
agglomerates that slide down the wall by
gravity and collect in the dust hopper in the
bottom.

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 Removal of Particles from Gas Streams
Cyclone Separators
• The cyclone separator is basically a gravity
settler made up with two concentric helices.
• Only the outer helix contributes to
collection; particles that get into the inner
helix, flows upward to the gas outlet,
escape uncollected.
• Thus, the outer helix is equivalent to the
gravity settler.
• The inlet stream has a height Wi in the
radial direction, so that the maximum
distance any particle must move to reach
the wall is Wi. The comparable distance in a
gravity settler is H. 39