(201d) Fundamental Design of Microfibrous Materials As Pleated Filter Media

Microfibrous-supported sorbent materials (MSSM) invented by the Center for Microfibrous Materials Manufacturing at Auburn University have shown applicability in removing  particulate matters and harmful airborne contaminants such as volatile organic compounds (VOC’s).  However, these dual-functioning materials have substantially higher flow resistances than traditional filtration media due to decreased fiber diameters, tighter packing densities, and the presence of adsorbent/catalyst particles. The utilization of these filters results in a significantly higher energy consumption; thus, these materials are limited in their use as media for air filters. A pleated filter design is a common approach in the air filtration industry to increase the available media area and reduce the pressure drop. Multi-element structured arrays (MESA's) developed by our group represent a new approach that can further increase the available filtration area and reduce the pressure drop across the system by integrating multiple pleated filter elements into a single filtration unit. In this study, we experimentally investigated the effect of design parameters (filter depth, pleat number, media thickness, element count) on filtration performance, such as pressure drop, dirt loading capacity, and particle removal efficiency for single pleated filters and MESA units, respectively. In addition, semi-empirical pressure drop models for pleated filters and MESA units were applied to optimize those parameters from energy efficiency and lower life-cycle cost standpoints.