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Electrostatic Precipitators (ESP) Analysis Using CFD

Subhransu Majhi, Swapnil Dindorkar & Ganesh Visavale1

LearnCAx, CAx education division
Centre for Computational Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Pune, India

Note: Videos used in this blog (if any) are not included in this document. Please visit the
original blog to view the videos.

The particulate emission from process industries has received great attention due to the
upcoming strict environmental protection agency (EPA) regulations and conservation in
recent years. The Electrostatic precipitators (ESP) since its development in 1907 by
Frederick G. Cottrell (Professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley) have
been the most common, effective and reliable technologies for removal of hazardous
emissions like flue gases, acid droplets and fine particles.
The industrial ESP are capable of handling large gas volumes with a wide range of inlet
temperatures, pressures, dust volumes and gas conditions and exhibit complex interaction
mechanism between electric field, fluid flow and particulate flows.

Figure 1 : Electrostatic precipitators

1

Dr. Ganesh Visavale (ganesh@cctech.co.in), LearnCAx, Centre for Computational Technologies Pvt. Ltd

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Working principle of ESP :

Electrostatic precipitators are used for reducing pollutants from the discharge (outlet) line
of process industries and are generally installed in the ducts that discharge the flue gases
into the atmosphere. The particulate matter in the emissions contain electric charges as
they pass out of processes within reaction chambers, combustion chambers, etc and are
negatively charged.

Figure 2: Working principle of ESP

Taking advantage of these charged particles, a set of positively charged sheets is inserted
inside the device in order to attract the particulates. As the flow passes over the parallel
set of sheets, the particles get attracted towards the sheet and get stuck over there. After
some time of operation, the sheets get covered by a layer of such particles, at that
moment the sheets are vibrated which causes the attracted particles to fall down and get
collected in the bottom, i.e. in the tapered shape collection zone. Once this zone is
sufficiently filled by such particulates, the bottom door is opened and the whole slug is
removed out of the ESP. Hence, by the application of electrostatic force these pollutants
are pulled out of the exhaust gas. This whole process is carried out inside an ESP and
hence by reducing pollutants (carbon content majorly) a more eco-friendly gas is rejected
into the atmosphere.
CFD as a design tool for ESP :
ESP though helps us to prevent pollutants from entering the atmosphere also actually adds
to the operational costs in the industry & hence its very important to have an efficient
ESP. An efficient ESP can be one that requires minimum electrical energy to separate out
the charged particles of the bulk gaseous waste. Further understanding the physics of the
process, one just needs to minimize the force required to attract & separate out the
particulates by reducing their kinetic energy resulting by decreasing the flow velocity.
The flow velocity can be reduced by increasing the cross sectional duct area that may
further result in change of flow distribution pattern. This then, becomes an important
point to study as to how uniformly the flow pattern is? This can be a very good CFD study
& lets discuss here a case study to better understand the CFD work.

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Objective of study : To separate out maximum particulate pollutants with the minimum
amount of power input.
From the velocity of the particles, we can find out the kinetic energy they possess. Based
on this force, we need to generate an electrostatic energy (from the electrodes inside the
device) of a higher magnitude than the kinetic energy of the particles in order to
successfully remove them out of the flow. As the target is to minimize the energy
required, it is obvious that we reduce the velocity of the flow as much as possible. It is
equally important to have uniform & optimum velocity throughout the device. This means,
velocity should not exceed the threshold value anywhere inside the device. If velocity
exceeds the max permissible value then, particles will not get trapped and hence escape
into atmosphere. At the same time if at some place, the velocity is too low then the
particles will get collected at the beginning of the device itself and the energy supplied to
the electrode sheets which are towards the end of the device will just go wasted. Hence it
is very essential to maintain uniform velocity throughout the device.
In order to maintain uniform velocity one needs to have a good design of the device as
well as entry and exit. Here CFD plays a very crucial role in testing and validating the
designs.
Electrostatic Precipitator Device :
A simple demo case presented here was designed on the basis of space availability and
hence it is quite visible in the geometry image (see below) that this design is not an
optimized one. There is an expected flow-separation at the inlet which is easily visible,
but in order to predict this designs ineffectiveness a complete CFD simulation needs to be
done and based on the results the design will be optimized and another CFD study is
conducted on the modified design. The CFD study will contain a very basic flow prediction
inside the device. The discrete pollutants being so light in weight, that they wont be
influencing the flow behavior at all. Hence, the discrete pollutant phase is not modeled in
this study and instead just air is modeled. The velocity prediction would give the
understanding of the effectiveness of the device.

Figure 3: Geometry of a typical ESP

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A steady-state single phase simulation was carried out with Reynolds-averaged Navier
Stokes equations coupled with the k-epsilon turbulence model equations. Default
convergence criteria of 10-3 for all the equations were considered.
CFD Results :
Let us have a look at the analysis data. The images below clearly show the non-uniformity
in the velocity distribution inside the ESP Device.

Figure 4: Non-uniform flow distribution in ESP

Figure 5: Velocity Contours

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In this setup, the available power was just sufficient enough to separate the particles
(from the bulk flow) having velocities of 1.5 m/s or below. The following images will
explain it in detail.

Figure 6: Velocity Contours

In the above images, can be clearly seen that in the colored zone the velocity is within
range and the centre part (i.e. unfilled area) indicates that the velocity is not in
operational range of the device. The percentage of area falling within the operational
range is about 38% and 10% in horizontal and vertical cross-section respectively. This
means that only around 25% pollutants would be removed from the exhaust gases whereas
the energy supplied to it was sufficient enough to remove them completely. This gives an
idea about how important role a proper design plays in each and every engineered
product.
Non-uniformity in velocity distribution was observed within the device due to the sudden
expansion of the duct which caused a flow-separation at the divergence section of the
inlet. It would have been much more uniform if the increase of cross sectional area was
done gradually, however though at times the decision is based on purely non-technical
factors like space availability & others.
Optimization study :
In the existing design, a steel wire-frame (filter) was introduced at the entrance of the
ESP to assist in the uniform distribution of flue gases.

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Figure 7: Geometry with Filters

The CFD approach was kept same as that of baseline study performed earlier, except the
filter section that was modeled as a porous zone. Let us now analyze the results from
the simulation study of this modified geometry.

Figure 8: Velocity Contours Vertical Central Plane

Figure 9: Velocity Contours Horizontal Central Plane

The above images have made it clear that the flow has become much more uniform than
earlier. Now let us analyze it more quantitatively.
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Figure 10: Velocity Contours

The above images display the area which falls in the optimum working range of the ESP.
The percentage area comes out to be 99%. This clearly states that the efficiency of the
device has increased from 25% to around 95% and above.
Also below is shown the video animation of the flow distribution in a ESP with and without
filter:

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Summary :
The initial design of the ESP was studied with the help of commercial CFD tool ANSYS
Fluent and after understanding its ineffectiveness, the design was modified by the
addition of a filter. The insertion of filter at the inlet helped delay the flow separation at
the inlet and improved the distribution of velocity in a more uniform pattern around all
the electrode plates thus improving the efficiency of the ESP from 25% to 95%. Hence, CFD
has proven as a very cost effective and useful tool in designing the Electrostatic
precipitator.
References :

Zhengwei Long, Qiang Yao ; Evaluation of various particle charging models for
simulating particle dynamics in electrostatic precipitators Journal of Aerosol Science
41 (2010), 702718.
F.J. Gutirrez Ortiz, B. Navarrete, L. Caadas; Dimensional analysis for assessing the
performance of electrostatic precipitators Fuel Processing Technology 91 (2010), 1783
1793.
G. Skodras, S.P. Kaldis, D. Sofialidis, O. Faltsi, P. Grammelis, G.P. Sakellaropoulos;
Particulate removal via electrostatic precipitatorsCFD simulation Fuel Processing
Technology 87 (2006), 623 631.
Shah M.E. Haque, M.G. Rasul, A.V. Deev, M.M.K. Khan, N. Subaschandar; Flow
simulation in an electrostatic precipitator of a thermal power plant Applied Thermal
Engineering 29 (2009), 20372042.

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