Cleaning Up Smoke With An Electrostatic Precipitator

[Steve Dufresne’s] got another great project for us — a device that effectively gets rid of smoke!

It’s called an electrostatic precipitator and it works similar to the way many cars are painted today using a process called electrostatic coating. Electrostatic coating works by giving the paint particles an electrostatic charge, opposite to the charge on the vehicle’s body panels — this makes the two attract and results in using around 95% of sprayed paint — barely any over-spray, and a better bond to boot!

[Steve’s] tried this experiment of creating a smoke precipitator with the eventual goal of using it on a car’s exhaust. He’s been through a few designs so far, and finally has one that works quite well. It’s not even that complicated, just take a look at the following diagram.

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