A CFD Method Study on the Resistance Performance of the Axial Flow Cyclone Separator

Abstract

Axial flow cyclone separator with guide blade has been widely used, due to its low resistance, huge gas processing and small volume. Although its structure is simple, three-dimension strong rotating turbulent flow forms which involves many complex interactions such as dual-phase separation, adsorption and electrostatic interference. This paper is focused on studying the resistance performance of the axial flow cyclone separator. Numerical simulation methods are carried out to acquire the internal flow field characteristics under different operating pressure and temperature conditions. The result shows that the pressure drop decreases under the same operating pressure, as the operating temperature increases. When the operating temperature is the same, the higher operating pressure enhances the value of the pressure drop. Velocity distribution, pressure contours and turbulent viscosity contours have been presented, to analyze the characteristics of the internal airflow, so as to help optimize the design. Experiments are intended to verify the results of numerical simulation and explore the internal flow field of the cyclone separator further. The cyclone separator has 8 rotary blades which are split into 8 parts, namely one blade is 45° in the tangential direction. 0° and 22.5° are chosen in the experiment. The dimensionless pressure distribution is shown. A comparison of the CFD results and the experimental results is made to prove that the numerical simulation methods are correct and accurate. The curve of the numerical simulation results is very close to that of the experimental results with the similar trend. It is concluded that the methods can predict the internal flow field characteristics of the axial flow cyclone separator.