Separation of fine particulates using a honeycomb tube electrostatic precipitator equipped with arista electrodes

•Performance of a honeycomb tube ESP is studied experimentally and numerically.•Asymmetrically distributed arista with 15° tip angle gives the best performance.•Separation efficiency improves almost linearly with supply voltage.•Separation efficiency deteriorates sharply with increasing gas flow velocity.•Larger particles yield better separation performance. Electrostatic precipitators (ESP) are areas of intense research due to its broad range of applications in separation and purification industries. A new type honeycomb tube ESP proposed, the corona in the tube is equipped with arista as electrodes. First, a two-dimensional computation is conducted to compare different arista configurations. The result indicates that asymmetrically distributed pointed end arista with the tip angle of 15° is the optimum discharge geometry. Then, the adopted corona is installed in a honeycomb test section for measurement. Influences of supply voltage, particle diameter and gas flow velocity upon electric field and separation efficiency are investigated in detail. Specifically, field parameters including average and maximum electric strength and strength uniformity are studied. The result implies that strength uniformity first improves but then deteriorates as supply voltage increases from 10 kV to 50 kV, whereas separation efficiency increases linearly within the same voltage range. Variation of strength uniformity against gas flow velocity obeys a pattern that is opposite to that against supply voltage. Therefore, separation efficiency drops quickly with increasing gas flow velocity.