10th International Aerosol Conference
September 2 - September 7, 2018
America's Center Convention Complex
St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Abstract View


Aeolian Dust Deposition and Removal on Surrogate Surfaces with Implications in Solar Energy

Benjamin Figgis, BING GUO, Wasim Javed, Said Ahzi, Yves Rémond, Texas A&M University at Qatar

     Abstract Number: 866
     Working Group: Control and Mitigation

Abstract
In this study, we measured the rates of dust deposition, rebound and resuspension on surfaces exposed in the dusty desert environment of Doha, Qatar, in order to understand the relation between these rates and the environmental variables airborne dust concentration (PM10), wind speed and relative humidity. An outdoor soiling microscopy (OSM) method was used to acquire images of dust particles on collector surfaces at 10-min intervals over 51 days, from which the rate information was extracted. Meteorological and dust data including wind speed, air temperature/humidity and PM10 were also collected in the same period of time. Air friction velocity was determined using scalar wind speed measurements at two elevations. Various empirical models from previous reports were compared against the present experimental results. It was found that the experimental deposition velocity agreed very well with the prediction of an empirical relation based on the experimentally determined air friction velocity (Kim et al. 2000). However, it was difficult to match the experimentally measured resuspension rate and the available quasi-steady-state empirical relations. This difficulty is presumably because resuspension is not steady-state unless in the hypothetical scenario that the deposited dust is steady-state. This study confirms that dust deposition on solar panels can be modelled adequately using existing models, but a better model is needed to adequately describe dust resuspension from soiled surface.

References:
Kim, E., Kalman, D. and Larson, T. (2000). Dry deposition of large, airborne particles onto a surrogate surface. Atmospheric Environment 34:2387-2397.