Electrostatic Precipitator ESP For Air Pollution Control
Particle Filtration for smoke and mist
This section of the air cleaning system generally consists of an electronic air cleaner sometimes referred to as an electrostatic precipitator (ESP). The technology used has been available for decades and it is currently in use not only for kitchen hoods, but also welding smoke and mist collection from machine tools in factories.
As air enters the ESP, the air passes through a high voltage section which deliberately places an electronic charge on any smoke or mist particles in the air stream. Then the charged particles pass through an electric field (think of it like a magnetic field) which is designed in such a way as to place a force on the particles perpendicular to the direction of air flow, thus moving the
particles out of the air stream to be collected in a component of the ESP named the collection cell(s).
Filtration efficiency of the ESP is inversely proportional to the airflow. As the airflow increases, the efficiency decreases. As the airflow decreases, the efficiency increases. For kitchen hood exhaust applications, efficiency should be as high as possible with a minimum efficiency of 95%.
During ESP operation, the precision aligned collection plates within the collection cell(s) become soiled with cooking smoke and oil mist from the kitchen hood exhaust. Unless the collection plates are kept clean, the collection efficiency of the ESP is reduced. Therefore, the collection cell(s) must be periodically cleaned for optimum performance of the ESP.
We offer both manually cleaned and self-cleaning versions of the ESP. Manually cleaning the collection cells involve opening an access door to the ESP, removing the cell(s), placing the cell(s) in a container filled with electronic cell cleaner detergent, letting the cell(s) soak for several minutes, rinsing the cell(s), letting the cell(s) dry, and finally, reinserting the cell(s) into the ESP. The self-cleaning version of the ESP automates this process and may be placed on an optional 7 day programmable
timer which will determine automatically when the wash cycle will occur.