Practical Spray Technology: Fundamentals and Practice

Atomization and spray technology is used in thousands of industrial and agricultural applications to achieve specific and critical results. This book is for the engineer designing, optimizing, or troubleshooting systems using spray nozzles and sprays. Examples include spray drying, gas quenching and conditioning, tank cleaning, and filter cake washing. Nearly all sprays can be improved or optimized by applying engineering design and application of the art and science of sprays. Practical perspective and insight, whether you are new to atomization, spray technology, and science, or a seasoned practitioner is based on the author's 25 years of experience applying sprays in industry. The spray fundamentals section covers spray characteristics, qualitative and quantitative measures including drops size measurement, drop size distribution, spray physics and modeling spray systems. There are six chapters covering the spray nozzle types, from the simplest hydraulic spray nozzles to most complex rotary atomizer. Each of these chapters describes the types of the spray nozzles available and provides performance correlations. Three chapters cover the design of systems and selection of nozzles. This section discusses the effects of liquid physical properties on the spray that is produced, which is a critical issue for process applications, due to the wide range of surface tension and viscosity of fluids sprayed. Designing systems to achieve a high degree of reliability is more critical today in many applications. This section also has practical perspectives for design controls for spray systems, a topic not covered in other spray technology books. Example calculations throughout the 15 chapters enable the reader to use the equations to solve some problems immediately.