Separating paint mist from paint spraying waste gas: mechanism, model and application

Abstract

The paint spraying waste gas contains a large amount of paint mist, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other hazardous materials, which seriously affects human health and atmospheric environment. Paint mist cannot be separated from paint spraying waste gas effectively by the existing dry filtration methods because of the filter blocking. A new separation process and a novel coupling device with high separation efficiency have been developed. A numerical model was established to optimize the structure and operation parameters of the baffle interceptor by hydrodynamics method which verified by the coupling device experiment. From the simulating results, when plate spacing was 20 mm, folding angle was 90° and airflow velocity was up to 8 m/s, the separation efficiency of paint mist with the diameter of 15 μm was 84.7% and the pressure drop of the baffle interceptor was 220.2 Pa. Experiment was conducted under the above-optimized conditions, and the results showed that the pressure drop of the baffle interceptor was 303.33 Pa, and the paint mist separation efficiencies of the baffle interceptor and the interception-filtration coupling device were 78.34% and 96.38%, respectively.