Experiment and Simulation on Pressure Drop of Pleated Air Filters
In order to reduce pressure drop of filtration process and increase filtration area, filtration media would usually made into pleated shape. The designs of pleats numbers and pleats height in the unit length have greatly impacted on pressure drop of the filtration process. In this paper, filter pressure drop of pleated air filters were examined by theoretical, experimental and simulation studies. By solving pressure drop from the Navier-Stokes equation on basis of velocity function assumption, by using the concept of average pressure drop in wind gap width, pressure drop in pleated filters was calculated. The numerical simulation of pleated filtration media was developed via using FLUENT software package and flow field variation in gap of pleated media was simulated. The results of theoretical calculations were in agreement with experimental results. It was confirmed that reducing pleat spacing or increasing pleats height could increased the area of filtration media and reduce the overall pressure drop of filters, although structure pressure drop increased. There were best value between pressure drop of pleated air filters and pleat numbers in the unite length. Key words: filtration medium; pressure drop; numerical simulation; air filter; pleated structure