Humidity control of particle emissions in aeolian systems

Humidity is an important control of the wind speed required to entrain particles into an air flow and is well known to vary on a global scale, as do dust emissions. This paper reports on wind tunnel experiments which quantify this control through placing a polymer capacitance sensor immediately at the bed surface. The sensor measured changes in the humidity (RH) of the pore air in real time. RH was varied between 15% and 80% and the critical wind speed determined for the release of particles to the air stream. The results strongly support earlier suggestions that fine particles are most affected in relatively dry atmospheres, particularly those which are tightly packed. An analytical model is proposed to describe this relationship which depends on determination of the matric potential from the Kelvin equation. The total contact area between particle asperities adjoined by pendular rings is represented as a power function of the number of layers of adsorbed water. The value of the exponent appears to be governed by the surface roughness of the particles and their packing arrangement. Parallel developments in colloid interface science and atomic force microscopy, relevant to industrial and pharmaceutical applications, support these conclusions in principle and will likely have an important bearing on future progress in parameterization of the proposed model.