Abstract
Conventional electrospray and air spray methods have the vulnerabilities of limited flow rate (throughput) and droplet size, respectively. Since high throughput with uniform size of droplet is required for various applications, an improved technique should be adopted. Here, we report a combined system of an air pressure and an electric field and evaluate the atomization performance of it. The air flow allowed applying high flow rate range and the electric field reinforced the atomization process to generate fine droplets. A correlation between two forces was investigated by comparing the droplet produced by each method. The atomized droplets were measured and visualized by image processing and a particle image velocimetry (PIV). The quantitative results were achieved from the parametric space and the effect of both forces was analyzed. The motion of charged droplets followed the outer electric field rather than the complex vortex in the shear layer so that the droplets accelerated directly toward the grounded collector.
