Interaction between Strong Sound Waves and Aerosol Droplets: Numerical Simulation

Abstract

In this study, we attempted to eliminate atmospheric fog and aerosol particles by strong sound waves. The action of sound waves created an air disturbance, and the oscillation of the local air caused the micron-sized aerosol droplet particles to move. To provide guidance of the characteristics of the effective sound waves, this study numerically simulated aerosol droplet agglomeration under the action of sound waves, which was solved by coupling computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element methods (DEMs) as a typical two-phase flow problem in this study. The movements of aerosol droplet particles were simulated, as well as their agglomeration. The evolution process of the average particle size and the number of multimers were obtained, and the influence of different sound frequencies, sound pressure level (SPL), and particle spacing on agglomeration were studied. It was found that the promotion effect of low-frequency sound waves on aerosol droplet agglomeration was significantly higher than that of high-frequency sound waves, and the sound wave promotion effect of high SPLs was better than that of low SPL. In addition, the concept of the average agglomeration time required to quantify the acoustic agglomeration speed was proposed, and it was found to be positively correlated with sound frequency and particle spacing, while being negatively correlated with SPL.