Effect of dust loading rate on the loading characteristics of high efficiency filter media

• Dust loading rate effect on the loading curve of high efficiency filters is studied.
• Effect of dust loading rate on filter loading curves is non-negligible.
• Filter pressure drop loaded at a given dust mass reduces as the loading rate increases.

Experiments were performed to systematically investigate the effect of dust loading rate on the loading curve, i.e., filter pressure drop v.s. loaded particle mass per unit filter area, of high efficiency filter media. Two types of filter media, i.e., glass fiber and electret filters, were selected and loaded with both Arizona road dust and ultrafine dust. Five dust loading rates and two filter face velocities (i.e., 10 and 20 cm/sec) were varied in this study. Our study indicates that the dust loading rate have its non-negligible effect on the loading curve of test filter media, especially at low particle loading rates. It is found that the pressure drop across filter media when loaded with particles at a specific mass per unit filter area decreases as the dust loading rate increases. The effect of loading rate was further evidenced by data analysis on the dust cake pressure drop. An empirical equation was also proposed to describe the loading curves obtained in this study.

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