Performance Improvement of Conventional Type Electrostatic Oil Filter with Reusable Filter Element

摘要

This paper deals with an improvement of filtration speed of an electrostatic oil filter. Commercially available electrostatic oil filters use a dielectric material such as paper as filter element. The filter element needs to be regularly exchanged to keep the filter performance and becomes waste after use. In order to minimize waste, reusable filter elements made of stainless steel are used in an electrostatic oil filter proposed. The effects of the configurations of the electrodes and filter elements on the electric and flow fields in the filter are numerically examined and three types of filter configuration are made based on the numerical simulation results. The effect of the filter configuration on the filtration speed is examined experimentally. The effect of the shape of the filter element on the filtration speed is also examined using one type of filter. It is shown that the filtration speed can be increased by making the flow velocity distribution in the filter uniform and an optimal filter configuration is proposed.