Aerosol Science 39 (2008) 1079 – 1088 www.elsevier.com/locate/jaerosci Development and application of a novel swirl cyclone scrubber—(1) Experimental Byeong-Kyu Lee a , ∗ , Kwang-Ryun Jung a , Sung-Hoon Park b a Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan 680-749, Republic of Korea b Department of Environmental Engineering, Sunchon National University, Suncheon, Jeonnam 540-742, Republic of Korea Received 30 November 2007; received in revised form 22 April 2008; accepted 22 July 2008 Abstract Conventional cyclones have a lower collection efﬁciency for smaller particles and conventional wet scrubbers have signiﬁcant clogging and fouling problems by salt formation at the tip, the inside and outside of the nozzles, the tubes and the walls of scrubbers. Also, many companies and manufacturing sites have been in trouble for collecting their adhesive particulates. The novel swirl scrubber that we have developed consists mainly of a cyclone and a swirl scrubber with an impact cone and plates. This study reports the collection efﬁciency of particulates and the application of the novel swirl scrubber. The particle collection efﬁciency as a function of particle size was investigated with changes of plate angles, nozzle size and pressure, and volumetric ﬂow rate of scrubbing medium. The particle collection efﬁciency increased with a decrease in plate angle, an increase in pressure of scrubbing medium at the nozzle tip, and an increase in volumetric ﬂow rate of the scrubbing medium. The collection efﬁciency of PM 10 by scrubbing effect was much higher than that by cyclonic effect. In particular, the total increase in particle collection efﬁciency by scrubbing effect was signiﬁcant (around 2.5 m) in particle aerodynamic diameter. The developed novel swirl scrubber can be used for signiﬁcantly increasing the collection efﬁciency of TSP, PM 10 , and PM 2.5 , in particular, which have adhesive characteristics. The costs for installation, operation and maintenance of the scrubber system are much cheaper than those of cyclones and scrubbers or other particulate collecting devices.  2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Swirl; Scrubbing; Cyclone; Plate; Sticky particles 1. Introduction Cyclones have been very useful as pre-cleaning devices of particles which are larger than 10 m in their aerodynamic diameter. However, it is not easy to get a higher collection efﬁciency than 90% with conventional cyclones if the particle size is not larger than 25 m. Even though advanced high-efﬁciency cyclones could get a collection efﬁciency of approximately 70% down to 5 m particles, the efﬁciency rapidly decreases with a size decrease in particles (Wark, Warner, & Davis, 1998; Yoshida, Ono, & Fukui, 2005). The signiﬁcant pressure loss and operation cost increase accompanied by improving collection efﬁciency of particles are also other drawbacks of cyclones. Wet scrubbers have been popularly used for the collection of acidic gases, mists, and particles with signiﬁcantly reducing risks of ﬁre, explosion and erosion (Chien & Chu, 2000; Deshwal et al., 2008; Jin, Deshwal, Park, & Lee, 2006; ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 52 259 2864; fax: +82 52 259 2629. E-mail address: bklee@ulsan.ac.kr (B.-K. Lee). 0021-8502/$ - see front matter  2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaerosci.2008.07.010