Effect of filtration pressure on the particle penetration efficiency of fibrous filter media

•Performance of fibrous filter media tested in the filtration pressure of 0.33–3.0 atm.•Single-fiber efficiency obtained by experiments compared to that by existing models.•A semi-empirical single-fiber efficiency formula for diffusive particles was proposed. The effect of filtration pressure on the particle collection performance of fibrous filter media was systematically investigated. The experiments were carried out in the filtration pressure range of 0.33–3 atm and using test particles in the electrical mobility size range of 20–400 nm. Two fibrous filter media: one made of glass fibers (GF) and the other made of metal fibers (SF), were selected for these tests. Our study shows that, at a face velocity of 0.1 m/s, by increasing the filtration pressure from 0.33 to 3 atm, the most penetrating particle size (MPPS) was slightly decreased, and the particle penetration was increased from 0.8% to 14% for media GF, and from 6.7% to 32.1% for media SF. In comparison to data calculated for existing single-fiber models, it was found that, for diffusive particles, the best fitting of available experimental data (i.e., those collected in this study and reported in others) was found under the assumption that the −1/3 power for the Péclet number is included in the single-fiber efficiency formula. Lastly, a semi-empirical single-fiber efficiency for diffusive particles is proposed to describe the reported experimental data.