Research and Application of Inertial Demister: An Overview

The air of sea environment is rich in salt and water, which is harmful to the engine of ships. Large power engine needs more air for burning, and the life of engine will be decreased by the corrosion of parts. In order to prolong the life of engine and keep safety while the engine is working, the demister is applied to reduce the content of water and salt in the air which are sucked by the engine. In the last decades, inertial demister and wire mesh demister were chosen to protect engine from the corrosion caused by water and salt. But the demister will increase intake resistance and influence the efficiency of the engine. Comparing inertial demister and wire mesh demister, although the latter is good at separating droplet because of the small distance between the adjacent wires, its resistance is larger when more layers are stacked on the top of each other so the number of layers is limited. As for the inertial demister, which can change the flow direction, heavier droplets will hit the wall of inertial demister and be caught under the influence of inertia. Inertial demister mainly consists of 1–2 lists of wave plates and fewer layers of wire mesh. A reasonable design of inertial demister should keep both low resistance and high separation efficiency. In addition, some issues of present study are concluded in this paper for future research.