A Concept of a Novel Solar-Assisted Large-Scale Cleaning System (SALSCS) for Urban Air Remediation

Qingfeng  Cao; David Y.H.  Pui; Wojciech  Lipinski

doi:10.4209/aaqr.2014.10.0246

A Concept of a Novel Solar-Assisted Large-Scale Cleaning System (SALSCS) for Urban Air Remediation

Control Techniques and Strategy

Qingfeng Cao¹, David Y.H. Pui ¹^,2, Wojciech Lipiński ³

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¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Minnesota, 111 Church Street SE, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA
²Faculty of Science, The University of Hong Kong, (null), Hong Kong
³Research School of Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia

Received: October 12, 2014
Revised: October 12, 2014
Accepted: November 15, 2014
Download Citation: ||https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2014.10.0246

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Cite this article:
Cao, Q., Pui, D.Y. and Lipiński, W. (2015). A Concept of a Novel Solar-Assisted Large-Scale Cleaning System (SALSCS) for Urban Air Remediation. Aerosol Air Qual. Res. 15: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.4209/aaqr.2014.10.0246

HIGHLIGHTS

A novel solar thermal system is proposed for urban air remediation.
The solar-driven air is passed through a filter bank to remove the particulate matter (PM).
The heat and fluid flow characteristics are evaluated numerically.
The potential for solar-driven air cleaning is demonstrated.
The process proposed is scalable by multiplying the air clean units.

ABSTRACT

A solar-assisted large-scale cleaning system (SALSCS) is proposed for air pollution abatement. The system consists of a large-scale flat-plate solar collector, a chimney, and a filter bank. In the basic configuration, an air flow is driven exclusively by buoyancy generated in the collector–chimney system, and PM_2.5 and larger particulate matter is separated from the air in the filter bank. The proof of concept is obtained by means of a transient 3D numerical simulation of fluid and heat flow for a full-scale system, implemented in ANSYS Fluent and performed using high-performance computing techniques. The effects of the filter bank on the system performance including heat transfer and fluid flow characteristics are evaluated by studying two system configurations, without and with a filter bank, respectively. The proposed SALSCS system is predicted to be capable of processing atmospheric air at a flow rate of 2.64 × 10⁵ m³/s, corresponding to the volume of 22.4 km³ of polluted air remediated in 24 hours.

Keywords: SALSCS; Air remediation; PM2.5 pollution; Solar; Numerical simulation