Abstract Number: 673 Working Group: Instrumentation and Methods
Abstract Air filters are commonly used for the removal of oil droplets generated by various machining processes. However the restructuring of droplets accumulated in a filter as a result of their coalescence and re-entrainment is so complicated that the prediction of time dependency of filter performance remains as a difficult task because many factors such as droplet size, surface tension and viscosity of liquid composing the droplets, as well as filtration velocity and filter structure influence the phenomenon. In the present work, the time evolution of restructuring of droplets collected in a filter was observed under an optical microscope by applying newly devised observation cell while monitoring the changes in collection efficiency and pressure drop of filter. The final goal of this work is to find the effect of filter’s factors, such as fiber diameter and packing density, and aerosol’s factors, such as filtration velocity, oil viscosity and surface tension, on the filter collection efficiency and pressure drop.