Fine particles, with diameters smaller than five microns, make-up a significant percentage of the particulate emissions in industry. These particles which are hazardous to health because of their ability to penetrate deeply into the respiratory tissues are difficult to remove by conventional technologies such as electrostatic precipitators, bag filters, etc. Macrosonic energy offers a means to solve this problem because induces agglomeration processes which change the particle size distribution. The acoustic agglomeration (AA) is a collision process between particles that can be attributed, among other causes, on relative motion between suspended particles of different sizes which promotes particle collisions and also due to the action of hydrodynamic forces resulting from mutual distortions of the flow fields around them.
In this work we present results of laboratory tests carried out on the AA of aerosol particles from electric arc steelmaking. For this we have developed a small installation consisting of a particle generator, an AA chamber with a plate ultrasonic transducer at 21 kHz, control systems and equipment for measuring particles. A decrease of the particle number concentration was obtained when an acoustic field was applied at 21 kHz along the aerosol by means of acoustic intensities higher than 150 dB.
