Study the thermophoresis effect on the deposition of nano-particles from diesel engine exhaust after the dilution tunnel

The aim of this paper was to study the thermophoresis effect on the deposition of nano-particles from diesel engine exhaust after the dilution tunnel using a computational modeling approach. Dilution tunnel was used in order to dilute the exhaust gas to the extend that was suitable for the measurement systems. The Lagrangian particle tracking method was used to model the dispersion and deposition of nano-particles. For the range of studied particle diameters (from 5 to 500 nm), the Brownian, thermophoresis, gravity and Saffman Lift forces are considered. After verifying the code, the importance of different forces was evaluated. Due to the temperature gradient between the exhaust gas and the pipe walls, particular attention was given to include the thermophoresis force in addition to the other forces acting on nano-particles. The results showed that for the range of nano-particle diameters studied, the Brownian force was the dominant force for particle deposition. Furthermore, the thermophoresis force was important even for relatively low temperature gradient and cannot be ignorable especially for larger particles. The maximum thermophoresis effect occurred for 100 nm particles. The gravity had negligible effects on nano-particle deposition and can be ignorable for particles with diameter less than 500 nm. The Saffman lift also had negligible effects and its effect was noticeable only for the deposition of 500 nm particles. The results of this paper could provide an understanding of two-phase flow emission from diesel engines especially after the dilution tunnel.