Filtration is a phenomenon determined by multiple scales. They range from the macroscopic size of a vehice to the atomic scale of adhesion forces between dust particles and fibers in a filter medium. Bridging these scales to correctly predict filtration phenomena is probably the most formidable challenge to simulation in the field. Fortunately, powerful computers, sophisticated models and new experimental equipment are available. Three-dimensional imaging devices with sub-micron resolution, desktop computers that are as powerful as supercomputers of a decade ago, and detailed models coupled with brilliant numerical models are some of the exciting developments that allow modeling and simulation work today that was unthinkable in the past. The talk gives an overview how detailed three-dimensional images and models of filter media, filtration process models, computational fluid dynamics and statistics can provide valuable guidelines for filtration from the practical point of view and deep new insights from the academic point of view.
Modeling and Simulation of filtration processes - a practitioner's overview