Physical principles:

A - Inertia Separation
Each individual wire in the knitted wire mesh packing is an abstraction for the pollutant-laden gas stream and more or less forces the gas stream to change directions. Droplets and particles contained in the gas cannot follow the directional changes (due to inertial forces) and are deposited on the wires. Small droplets join and grow (the coalescence-effect). Large droplets settle in counter-flow to the gas stream, due to gravitational force.

B - Barrier Separation
The barrier effect comes into force if the diameter of aerosol droplets is large in comparison with the diameter of the wire.

C - Diffusive Separation
The two separation principles described above are practically ineffective for the smallest aerosol droplets in the micro-size range. Brownian diffusion takes effect within this range. This is a more or less accidental back and forth motion of the smallest particles caused by interaction between the particles and gas molecules. The efficiency of diffusive separation increases as the particles size and the gas velocity through the wire mesh packing decreases.