Study on filtration performance of elliptical fiber with different arrangements

Abstract

The fibrous media composed of elliptical fibers is widely used owing to the high filtration efficiency. However, there are few studies on the arrangement of non-circular fibers, although the single non-circular fiber has been clearly investigated. In this article, two-dimensional numerical geometries of fibrous media with different elliptical fiber arrangements, namely, random distribution structure, dense–sparse structure, and bimodal structure, are developed for studying filtration performance. The results show that the large aspect ratio and solid volume fraction represent low particle penetration. When the particle diameter ( Dp) is small, the quality factor of bimodal structure is higher than the dense–sparse structure, especially at Dp = 50 nm. For the large Dp, the opposite is true. Meanwhile, reducing fiber diameter ( Df) is more significant than increasing solid volume fraction in terms of improving penetration. As for dense–sparse structure, replacing the elliptical fibers in sparse layers with circular fibers can comprehensively improve the quality factor of fibrous media. However, if the replacement between elliptical fiber and circular fiber occurs in dense layer, it will result in high quality factor at Dp ⩽ 500 nm, while low quality factor at Dp > 500 nm.