FILTER PERFORMANCE UNDER SIMULATED REAL-WORLD CONDITIONS

Evaluating the performance of filter media for filtration applications is essential to assure design engineers and users that filter device will deliver promised performance for specific applications under the environmental stress. The study of particle loading characteristics of filter media in the laboratory setting is typically performed under the steady flow conditions, i.e., at the constant particle concentration and flow rate. In reality, filtration products are operated under the situations that the flow rate and mass concentration of particles are varied in time. The success of translating the laboratory data to estimate the performance of filter media in the fields is thus limited. It is necessary to investigate the performance of filter media under the real-world conditions, i.e., unsteady flow rate and mass concentration to bridge the gap. The overall goals of this research are (1) to study the performance of filter medium under unsteady conditions (i.e., the performance of respirator filter media under simulated breathing conditions); and (2) to investigate the issue of non-uniform particle deposition on HVAC filter panels. A new experimental setup was developed to accomplish the former goal. Numerical modeling tool, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), was applied to achieve the latter objective…