Physical Principle, Advantages, and Disadvantages of Dust Collection Technology

Particles Collection Technology
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Particles Collection Technology
Particles collection technology is an essential part of the industrial environment as it determines the pollution potential of an industrial plant. The three main dust collection technologies that are commonly used in many industries are cyclones, baghouses, and electrostatic precipitators. In the essay, the physical principle, advantages, and disadvantages of each dust collection technology are explored.
Cyclones
Cyclone dust separators are mainly used within the industrial environment to facilitate the separation of solid particles from air-conveying systems. At the basic design level, a cyclone consists of a vertical cylinder that is conically shaped at the bottom. The essential parts of a cyclone include an airlock, inlet and outlet pipes, and a hopper for discharging the particles. Notably, all the parts in a cyclone are fixed and the process of dust removal in the device depends on the combination of the gas, the particles to be removed and the pressure applied to pressurize vapors (Safikhani & Mehrabian, 2016).
The physical principle used by the cyclone to collect particles is inertial separation, whereby gravitational, centrifugal, and inertial forces are leveraged to achieve dust collection. To this end, air combined with the particles is pumped into the cylindrical section of the cyclone at a tangent through various entry points in the conical-shaped bottom of the cyclone (Oh et al., 2012). As the contaminated air travel through the cylinder, it is bombarded with quick cyclones that form a vortex in the dust collection chamber. The resultant centrifugal force separates the larger particles from the airstream and pushes them along the wall of the cylindrical chamber, where the hopper collects them. Finer particles in the air move to the second filtration stage where they are eventually captured.
Notably, the key advantage of cyclones is that they require low investment due to their simple design. Also, cyclones are not hard to maintain and repair compared to other particle collection systems. On the other hand, cyclones are severely limited with regard to their dust collection ability. They have limited application use and report low efficiency in capturing fine particles (Safikhani & Mehrabian, 2016).
Baghouse
Baghouses are industrial fabric filter systems that are mainly used to prevent the release of particles into the atmosphere. Notably, the physical principle that is used by baghouses to collect particles from the air is filtration (Zerin & Datta, 2018). As noted, baghouses have either filter bags or pleated filters that are organized in a row and vertically mounted in a housing made of sheet metal. The filters are typically designed in such a manner that they can be able to receive contaminated air from the source, filter out the contaminants, and give out the cleaned air into the atmosphere. The bughouses have a duct system that draws...