Design and Testing of Apparatus for Producing Dry Fog

Abstract

Dry fog is a specific form of aerosol that is used in many branches of industry and many aspects of everyday life. It can be used, inter alia, to disinfect rooms or to control the level of humidity. One of its greatest advantages is undoubtedly its ability to work in the vicinity of electrical devices. Although the process of its formation and the very phenomenon of its occurrence are extremely simple things to describe, there are still many aspects that can be discovered, which are the focus of research by scientists around the world. One of the main parameters that influence the production process of dry fog is the pressure of the supplied gas, as well as the environmental conditions in which the aerosol is formed. This work focuses on the production of dry fog with the use of the designed and constructed apparatus, the structure of which is based on a jet nebulizer. The test and measurement stand is equipped with a compressor with a built-in pressure gauge for reading air pressure, a valve that allows the flow to be regulated, and an air supply and heating device that operates at various power values. The aim of this research was to check the impact of the power that is supplied to the system, as well as the impact of changing selected parameters such as gas pressure (which is one of the required media), on the liquid spraying process. The analysis of the results obtained during the experimental tests was based on the photographic method and allowed the mean Sauter volume–surface diameters of the obtained droplets to be compared. The analysis also showed that an increase in the power of the air supply and heating device translates directly into an increase in the ambient temperature in which the dry fog is formed, and contributes to the reduction of the diameter of the generated droplets. Changing the pressure of the atomized gas has a direct impact on the size of droplets in the generated aerosol—the higher the pressure, the smaller the droplets.