Toward Predicting Filtration and Separation: Progress & Challenges

The need for correctly predicting filtration and separation processes is greater than ever. 
New legislation, new materials, globalization and short development cycles require deeper 
understanding than before. Computer Simulations are a recent and efficient way to gain 
knowledge regarding filtration. But modeling and simulation efforts face serious difficulties 
in their quest to complement experiment / observation and theory. Filtration is a phenomenon 
determined by multiple scales. They range from the flow regime around a moving vehicle to 
the atomic regime of adhesion forces between dust particles and an electrically charged filter 
medium. Fortunately, powerful computers, sophisticated models and new experimental 
equipment are available. Desktop computers with lots of memory and several fast CPUs, 
three-dimensional filter media models combined with SEM and µCT images are some of the 
exciting developments that allow work today that was unthinkable in the past. We present 
examples how filter media models, filter process models, CFD and statistics can provide 
insights into filtration from the practical and the academic point of view.