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2678106 
Journal Article 
Modeling instantaneous pressure drop of pleated thin filter media during dust loading 
Fotovati, S; Hosseini, SA; Tafreshi, HV; Pourdeyhimi, B 
2011 
Yes 
Chemical Engineering Science
ISSN: 0009-2509 
66 
18 
4036-4046 
WOS:000292543800004 
In this paper, we present a modeling methodology for studying the effects of dust loading on the pressure drop across pleated filters. Our simulations demonstrate that there exists an optimum pleat count for clean filters at which pressure drop reaches a minimum regardless of the in-plane or through-plane orientation of the fibers. With the particle deposition included in the analysis, our results indicated that the rate of increase in pressure drop decreases with increase in the pleat count. We demonstrated that a higher pleat count results in a higher flow velocity inside the pleat channels causing more non-uniformity in the dust deposition across the pleat. Especially when particles are sufficiently large, the dust cake tends to form deeper inside the pleated channel when the pleat count is high. This effect is observed to be less pronounced when the pleats have a triangular shape. We also showed that if the dust cake permeability is higher than that of the filters fibrous media, the rate of increase in pressure drop does not always decrease with increase in the pleat count. Finally, by comparing filters having 15 pleats per inch, we observed that rectangular pleats are preferred over the triangular pleats when the particles are highly inertial, i.e., filtering high-speed large particles. When particle's inertia is small, our results indicate that triangular pleats cause less pressure drop, and so are recommended. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 
Aerosol; Filtration; Fluid mechanics; Porous media; Separation; CFD simulation