Abstract Respiratory diseases have received increasing attention in recent decades. Airway bifurcations are difficult regions to study, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers an alternative way of evaluating the behavior of pharmaceutical aerosols used in the treatment of respiratory disorders. In this work, particle deposition was analyzed using a three-dimensional model with four ramifications (three bifurcations), under different respiratory conditions: inhalation, exhalation, and breath holding. The main aim of the work was to verify the medical recommendation to hold one's breath during a few seconds after inhaling pharmaceutical aerosols, rather than exhaling immediately after the inhalation. The deposition of particles with 5 µm diameter was considered. The results showed that the number of aerosols collected on the airway walls was higher for the situation of breath holding, which supported the medical recommendation.

A Pease-Anthony Venturi scrubber is a gas cleaning device that uses liquid, injected in the equipment as jets, to remove contaminants from the gas. The liquid jet is atomized into droplets, which are dispersed throughout the equipment due to the turbulence. The performance of the scrubber is affected by the spatial distribution of the droplets. Although CFD models have been used to predict the droplet dispersion, these models are expensive. Alternatively, the concept of "jet spreading angle" could be used as a simple and quick way to estimate droplet dispersion. The purpose of this paper is to measure the spreading angle of jets transversally injected into the throat of a Venturi scrubber and correlate it with both gas and jet velocities. The throat gas velocities varied between 59 and 74 m/s and the jet velocity between 3.18 and 19.1 m/s. The angles were measured through image analysis, obtained with high velocity photography. The spreading angle was found to be strongly dependent on jet velocity.

The Venturi scrubber is a device which uses liquid in the form of droplets to efficiently remove fine particulate matter from gaseous streams. Droplet size is of fundamental importance for the scrubber performance. In the present experimental study, a laser diffraction technique was used in order to measure droplet size in situ in a Venturi scrubber with a rectangular cross section. Droplet size distribution was measured as a function of gas velocity (58.3 to 74.9 m/s), liquid-to-gas ratio (0.07 to 0.27 l/m³), and distance from liquid injection point (64 to 173 mm). It was found that all these variables significantly affect droplet size. The results were compared with the predictions from correlations found in the literature.