High Efficiency Low Pressure Drop Electrostatic Enhanced Filtration for NBC Aerosols.

An Electrostatic Enhanced Filtration (EEF) technology is proposed for NBC collective protective systems such that the efficiency of the current NBC filter medium can be enhanced to at least 99.997 at 0.3 micron, without any increase in the pressure drop of the current medium. This technology also has the potential to kill bacterial components of the aerosol, and possibly also viruses. On the other hand, some amount of ozone is generated by the process (which can be reduced by optimizing the electrode and field configurations). This is a feasbility study, aimed at establishing the required design parameters (e.g. field strength, and electrode geometry) such that the efficiency enhancement is maximized and the ozone production is minimized. A 500-1000 scfm prototype will be constructed and evaluated for efficiency and pressure drop. The effect of the minimized ozone production on ventilation requirements to meet NIOSH standards for ozone, will also be established by means of a material balance model (Jaisinghani et al. 1989). Additionally, a preliminary evaluation of the effectiveness of the device in terms of killing bacteria, will be conducted.