Particle Capture on Oil-Coated Fibers

Oil-coated fibers are ubiquitous and useful for mist elimination, smog capture, and particle collection, to name a few. However, the interaction between impacting particles and oil-coated fibers has not been fully understood. In this study, we use two oil-coated parallel fibers to investigate particle capture dynamics. We identify that changing the amount of oil on the fibers and spacing between the fibers create various shapes of oil on the fibers from clam shell or barrel shaped droplets to columns connecting the fibers. On these oil-coated fibers, we explore the effects of particle size and impacting velocity, fiber flexibility, and fluid properties on particle capture dynamics. In particular, flexible fibers deform along the direction that particles impact, decreasing the relative velocity between the impacting particles and fibers, which improves particle capture efficiency compared with rigid fibers. Extending the fundamental understanding of the particle-fiber interaction, we demonstrate that microplastic particles are captured by oil-coated fibers in the air and water more efficiently compared to fibers without oil coating. We envision that the systematic understanding from this study could be applied to a larger scale particulate matter and microplastics collection systems.