Performance and Techno-economic Evaluation of a High-Efficiency Electrospray Cyclone

"Nowadays, because of the global air pollution issue caused by fine dust, fine dust collection and removal technologies are crucial for enhancing living environments and human health. This research proposes a new pilot-scale electrospray cyclone (ESC) designed for the collection of submicron dust particles. The experimental apparatuses comprised a cyclone dust collector and an insulating tank. Initially, laboratory-scale single-nozzle visualization tests were conducted to determine the droplets’ number and size under various operating conditions. Subsequently, based on the visualization research outcomes, modifications were made to a section of the existing industrial cyclone, which was combined with the ESC. Performance assessments of the pilot-scale ESC were conducted under diverse water flowrates and corona power conditions. The capture efficiencies for PM10, PM2.5, and PM1.0 were measured up to 98.2%, 95.4%, and 90.3%, respectively. Both the environmental and economic viabilities of the newly-proposed ESC in this study were evaluated based on three aspects: its capacitive particle collection efficiency; capital cost and operational power consumption. This evaluation method has been defined as the Levelized Cost of Precipitator (LCOP), and it is intended to assess the environmental and economic performance of dust collectors. In these results, the ESC indicates relatively high quality of the dust collectors on the environmental and economic aspects. The environmental effect evaluation is based on non-captured particle emission. Based on these indices, we assess that the ESC has one of the promising alternatives of commercial precipitators."