Experimental and Numerical Study of Aerosol Coagulation by Gravitation

The behaviors of aerosols having particle diameters of 1–5 μm were studied experimentally and the results were compared with numerical calculations. For the experimental study, a specially designed coagulation cylinder was developed and the moment method was used in the numerical predictions. The experimental results were characterized by the size parameters including the geometric mean diameter (GMD), the geometric standard deviation (GSD) and the particle number concentration (N). Particle distributions in the cylinder were measured at certain time intervals. In a closed cylinder, the mechanism governing aerosol behavior appeared to be gravitational coagulation. Separately, the numerical calculations were carried out using the moment method. The experimental results and the numerical predictions were in reasonable agreement. It is believed that the present work represents the first experimental study on gravitational coagulation.