CFD Modeling and Optimization of Paint Hangar Overspray Filtration System

The paint hangar overspray filtration chamber for aerospace applications is rarely studied compared to other industrial paint booths. In most aerospace applications, you must carefully control temperature, humidity, and reaction to contaminants. This paper focused on parameter optimization for capturing fine overspray particles of less than $0.4 \mu \mathrm{m}$, not trapped by 50 mm paint stop filter media. The airflow pattern in the wind tunnel setup, with inlet velocities of 0.5 m/s as lower limits and a maximum limit of 3.0 m/s, was selected to influence the particle flow in the filter domain. The selection of material varies only in the thickness of an oil-wetted cellulose pad with a flute angle of 45°. The airstream paint particle sizes from less than 1 to $38 \mu \mathrm{m}$ at a mean particle diameter of $7.39 \mu \mathrm{m}$ were selected to track. The entire optimization process used commercial simulation software called ANSYS Fluent. The Design of Experiment (DOE) analytical approach of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) searched for the optimal parameters for capturing fine overspray paint particles. The Response Surface Methodology (RSM) results showed that the candidate for the goodness of fit for optimal parameters was obtained at 0.6 porosity with an inlet velocity of 1.75 m/sec and a cellulose pad thickness of 0.22 m which had the most significant effect on reducing the escaped mass particles by 1.32e-21 kg/sec. Furthermore, post-DOE simulation results demonstrate a substantial improvement concerning optimized output parameters of escaped mass particles. The permeability expressed as a function of the cellulose pad-free escape area corresponds to a 98.3% capturing efficiency of the overspray filtration chamber with 299 escape particles leaving the domain.