Reviewing the Concept of Acoustic Agglomeration in Reducing the Particulate Matter Emissions

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the world’s major growing concern. Particulate Matter, which is a complex mixture of solid or liquid airborne particles, is one of the predominant emissions that shows a drastic impact on human health. While we observe a constant decline in these emissions from the transport sector over the years, the current number still exceeds the WHO & EU standards. The particulate matter of size less than 2.5 μm is found to be damaging human health by penetrating into the blood, heart and respiratory systems. In this article, we reviewed the technique Acoustic agglomeration and its application in reducing the Particulate Matter emissions. It involves a process of using sound waves to manipulate the motion of airborne particles to collide and agglomerate so that they can be easily filtered through the conventional filters. This process is found to be applied in various industries like chemical, air filtration in refrigerators and coal combustion plants. Several other experiments that involve acoustic agglomeration technique in reducing the particulate pollution coming from various sources including automobiles was reviewed. The success of these researches and the implementation of this technique in automobile might solve the problems associated with the particulate pollution.