Fluid Dynamic Simulation of a Collector for Nanoparticles from an

Aerosol at low Process Pressures Through Forced Thermophoresis

Zhenxing Ren
1)
, Frank Schmidt
1)
, Shuzhen Zhou
1)
, and Markus Winterer
1)
1)
Nanoparticle Process Technology,

Universitt Duisburg-Essen, Germany

ABSTRACT

The extraction of nanoparticles from an aerosol produced in a Chemical Vapor Synthesis (CVS) process is a
challenge as filters based on membranes limit the conductance of the vacuum lines, cyclotrons are limited to
larger particles and electrostatic precipitators do not operate efficiently at typical low process pressures. We de-
veloped a high temperature particle collector which is based on forced thermophoresis working under CVS condi-
tions where a temperature gradient between a quartz IR-lamp and water cooled walls force the particles towards
the cold wall where they are deposited and can be collected. In this study we simulate the thermophoretic particle
collector by computational fluid dynamics using the commercial code FLUENT.


INTRODUCTION
Gas to particle conversion is a common method to
generate nanoparticles. Chemical Vapor Synthesis
(CVS) is such an aerosol process where high quality
nanoparticles are generated by a chemical reaction in
a flow reactor. This process operates usually at high
temperatures and low pressures, typically of the order
of 1000 Pa. A novel high temperature particle collector
was developed [1] in order to recover the particles from
the aerosol separating them from the carrier gas and
byproducts of the chemical reaction which generated
the particles such as water vapor or carbon dioxide.
The process is based on forced thermophoresis and
has a high collection efficiency even for very small
nanoparticles and at CVS process conditions. This
particle collection is also a clean method as essentially
only stainless steel and quartz surfaces come into
contact with the aerosol stream. In this study the ther-
mophoretic collector is modelled using computational
fluid dynamics in order to investigate the collection
efficiency as a function of operating parameters.

COMPUTATIONAL METHODOLOGY
The thermophoretic collector consists essentially of two
concentrical cylinders between which the aerosol is
flowing. The inner cylinder is a IR quartz lamp and the
outer cylinder is a water cooled wall made from
stainless steel (Fig. 1). Between quartz lamp and cold
wall a large thermal gradient forces the particles to
move towards the cold wall according to their thermo-
phoretic velocity u
th
[2]:
u

th =
K
th
T
T (1)
where = / is the kinematic viscosity, u
th
is the
thermophoretic velocity, K
the
an empirical coefficient
depending on the particle Knudsen number and T the
absolute temperature.
In this study we assume that the whole process takes
place under the condition of laminar flow, which carries
the nanoparticles through the cylindrical pipe. The
aerosol is heated with the help of an IR-quartz lamp in
the center of the collector, the temperature of which is
variable. The wall of the collector is cooled by means
of cold water at a constant temperature of 20C. The
corresponding temperature gradient of typically
250 K/cm induces a thermophoretic force on the parti-
cles to drive them from the hot quartz lamp in the cen-
ter towards the cold wall. The particles in the collector
undergo simultaneously also coagulation and sintering
processes. All fluid and aerosol dynamic processes
can be described by the General Dynamic Equation, in
which coagulation and particle transport result in the
change of the particle number distribution. In order to
solve this equation in CFD, a monodisperse model [3]
was employed, in which it is assumed, that all agglom-
erates in a cell contain the same number of equally
sized primary particles [4].


Fig. 1: Simplified drawing of the thermophoretic parti-
cle collector.

The CFD grid was generated using GAMBIT. The fluid
dynamics of the aerosol which is a incompressible
laminar flow is described solving the Navier-Stokes
equations using the CFD-code FLUENT under appro-
proate initial and boundary conditions.
At the inlet of the reactor it is assumed that a carrier
gas transports 10
17
m
-3
particles of 5 nm diameter into
the reactor with velocities in x-direction of 5 m/s to
20 m/s. The temperature of the quartz lamp was varied
between 293 K and 1273 K. The operation pressure
was investigated in the range between 1000 Pa and
10.000 Pa. Since the particles are usually generated in
a hot wall reactor, a temperature of the aerosol at the
inlet of 473 K is assumed.
FLUENT is capable of solving transport equations for
any additional, user-defined scalar in the same way as
it handles the transport equations for momentum and
energy. The general equation for the solving of a
transport scalar can be described in the form [5]:
(j

D )=S (2)
where is the flux function, D is the diffusion coeffi-
cient and S is the source term. Particularly, the flux
function can be written as:
j

=
p
(u

+ u

th) N (3)
with particle density
p
, convection velocity u, and
thermophoretic velocity u
th
. In this study, the particle
deposition efficiency is defined as:
=1 j

o
/ j

i
(4)
which is the ratio of flux functions between inlet and
outlet of the collector.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
At low temperature of the lamp distribution in the col-
lector is dominated by the gradient between type hot
gas from the reactor at the inlet and the cold collector
whereas at high temperatures the large radial tempera-
ture gradient between the hot lamp and the cold walls
dominate (Fig. 2) and are able to force the particles
towards the collector wall.
By solving the Navier Stokes equations under low
mach number, the convection velocity of particles can
be calculated. Under conditions of different velocites of
aerosol at inlet, the same process pressure and the
same gas, the velocity field in the collector is shown in
Fig. 3. According to equation (3) this has to be seen in
contrast to the thermophoretic velocity field displayed
in Fig. 4 where it is obvious that the thermophoretic
velocity depends on the type of carrier gas used.
Therefore, the collection efficiency increases with in-
creasing temperature gradient between lamp and col-
lector wall i.e. by increasing the temperature of the
lamp and also by increasing the thermal conductivity of
the carrier gas.

Fig. 2: Temperature contours in the collector at lamp
temperature of a) 293 K, b) 373 K, c 1073 K, and d
1273 K at an inlet velocity of 5 m/s using He as carrier
gas and a total pressure of 1000 Pa.


Fig. 3: Convection velocity fields in the collector for
different velocities of a) 5 m/s, b) 10 m/s and c) 20 m/s
the aerosol at the inlet


Fig. 4: Thermal velocity fields as a function of carrier
gas a) He, b) N
2
, c) Ar and d) CO
2
.

This can clearly be seen from the plot in Fig. 5 where
helium with a thermal conductivity of 0.155 W/mK
shows the best collection efficiency followed by nitro-
gen (0.0258 W/mK), argon (0.0179 W/mK) and car-
bon dioxide (0.0156 W/mK).


Fig. 5: Collection efficiency for different carrier gases
as a function of lamp temperature and a inlet velocity
of 10 m/s and a total pressure of 5.000 Pa.



Fig. 6: Distribution of the number concentration of
agglomerates in the collector. The lamp temperature is
1273 K, the inlet velocity 10 m/s and He is the carrier
gas.

Fig. 6 shows the distribution of the particle number
concentration in the collector. It is obvious that the
particles are driven to the wall where they are depos-
ited.
Additionally, it could be shown that the thermophoretic
collector described here operates better at low total
pressures.

CONCLUSIONS
The deposition efficiency of a thermophoretic particle
collector under realistic conditions was studied using
CFD-simulations. Higher collection efficiencies can be
achieved for higher lamp temperatures, slower convec-
tive velocity of the aerosol and at lower operation pres-
sure. The influence of the carrier gas can not be ne-
glected because of the differences in heat conductivity.
Helium is the best choice from the gases investigated.

REFERENCES:
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and Structure, Springer, Heidelberg 2002.
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und Stoffbertragung 30 (1994), 47-54.
[3] F. Kruis, K. Kusters, S. Pratsinis and B. Scarlett, A
simple model for the evolution of the characteris-
tics of aggregate particles undergoing coagula-
tion and sintering. Aerosol Sci. Technol. 19
(1993), 514526.
[4] B. Giesen, H. Wiggers, A. Kowalik & P. Roth,
2005. Formation of Si-nanoparticles in a micro-
wave reactor: Comparison between experiments
and modelling. J . Nanoparticle Res. 7, 29-41.
[5] Fluent 2005. Fluent Users Guide, Version 6.2.
Fluent Inc., Computational Fluid Dynamics Soft-
ware, Centerra Resource Park, 10 Cavendish
Court, Lebanon, NH 03766

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial sup-
port of the German Research foundation through the
collaborative research center SFB 445. We also ac-
knowledge the support by CeNIDE (Center for Nanoin-
tegration Duisburg-Essen).