Electrostatic charging and modeling of aqueous sprays and fission of droplets

This paper reports the computation of charge to mass ratio of water sprays produced by hydraulic nozzles using two different methods of electrostatic charging; namely, the contact and induction methods. Modeling of each charging method was achieved by an axisymmetric field computation program based on the charge simulation method (CSM). Comparisons between the measured and computed charge to mass ratio vs. flow rate were introduced for each case, and good agreement with the trend of both was found. Where the charge to mass ratio decreases with the increase in flow rate and/or nozzle height, but it increases linearly with applied voltage. Finally, fission of a water droplet in a uniform electric field was also modeled to show how the number of fissioned droplets will affect the kinetic energy of each fissioned sibling droplet, sibling-sibling interspacing, and charge to mass ratio.