Filtration of aerosol particles by cylindrical fibers within a parallel and staggered array

The World Health Organization (WHO) in 2013 reported that more than seven million unexpected losses every year are credited to air contamination. Because of incredible adaptability and expense viability of fibrous filters, they are broadly used for removing particulates from gasses. The influence of appropriate parameters, e.g., the fiber arrangement, solid volume fraction (SVF or α), fluid flow face velocity (mean inlet velocity), and filter thickness (I _x ), on pressure drop and deposition efficiency are researched. Furthermore, to study the effects of variation of the laminar flow regime and fiber’s cross-sectional shape on the deposition of particles, only a single square fiber has been placed in a channel. By means of finite volume method (FVM), the 2-D motion of 100–1000 nm particles was investigated numerically. The Lagrangian method has been employed and the Saffman’s lift, Drag, and Brownian forces have been considered to affect this motion. Contribution of increasing the Reynolds number to filtration performance increased with smaller fine aerosols to a level of 59.72 %. However, for over 500 nm, the Re = 100 has more efficient results up to 26.97 %. Remarkably, the single square fiber in Re = 200 regime performs similarly to the optimum choice of multi-fibrous filters. It was portrayed the parallel circular multi-fibrous filter with a ratio of horizontal-to-vertical distances between fibers, l/h = 1.143; α = 0.687, I _x  = 116.572, and h/d _f  = 1.0 is the most efficient filter’s structure. The increase in the ratio of vertical distances between fibers-to-fiber’s diameter (h/d _f ) and decrease in SVF or α, results in a drastically decrement of the filtration performance of both parallel and staggered structures. The obtained results have been validated with previous research findings.