Particle capture by a rotating disk in a kitchen exhaust hood

Abstract

Chinese cooking produces large numbers of particles that can cause both indoor and outdoor air quality problems. To reduce the extraction of particles to the outdoor air, this investigation studied capture efficiency of a rotating disk in an exhaust hood. The studies were performed experimentally in a wind tunnel and numerically by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models with the Lagrangian method for tracking particle trajectories. The experimental data were used to identify the best turbulence model among the three tested in the CFD simulations. The results show that the capture efficiency increased with disk rotation speed and particle size but decreased with exhaust airflow rate. The CFD simulations provided detailed information about the mechanisms by which particles of different sizes were captured by the rotating disk. CFD was then used to explore two methods for improving the capture efficiency: adding more wires to the middle and outer zones of the disk, and using two layers of disks. Both methods can increase the capture efficiency of the rotating disk at an acceptable pressure loss.

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