Experimental on liquid passage saturation and pressure drop of gas-liquid coalescing filter material

Abstract

The liquid channel characteristics of coalescing filter material directly affect the filtration performance of coalescing filter elements for natural gas purification. Herein, the channel saturation and pressure drop of two kinds of industrial oleophobic filter materials were tested by a filter material experimental device. Then, an investigation was conducted within the filtration gas velocity of 0.1-0.7 m/s and the dynamic liquid viscosity of 46-320 mPa·s to explore their comprehensive influence on the characteristics of liquid channel inside the coalescing filter material. The results show that the channel saturation and pressure drop inside the coalescing filter material decrease exponentially with the increase of the filtration gas velocity under the same dynamic liquid viscosity, and increase linearly with the increase of liquid viscosity under the same filtration gas velocity. Based on these rules, a prediction model of liquid channel characteristics was established, and the relevant results could be used to quantitatively characterize the interaction between liquid channel characteristics and the parameters, such as the filter material structure, liquid viscosity and filtration velocity.

Keywords

• coalescence
• filter material
• liquid viscosity
• channel pressure-drop
• saturation