CFD study on the performance of reducing pressure drop holes in cyclone separator

Abstract

Cyclone separator is the one of the simple and effective equipment for removing the dust or suspended particle in gaseous phase. Even though cyclone separator is effective it has drawbacks such as pressure drop, wear of refractory wall etc. Ample research was carried out in cyclone separator for reducing pressure drop and increase separation efficiency. However, many research works lean on design modification of cyclone separator. Whereas this article mainly concentrates on reshaping existing cyclone separator. Reducing pressure drop holes (REPDH) are drilled equidistantly on the circumference of existing cyclone separator vortex finder in four distinct ways termed as 4-holes, 8-holes, 12-holes and 16-holes respectively. Cyclone separator with and without REPDH are modelled in SOLIDWORKS 2016 for a stream rate of 500 m 3 /hr. Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis are carried for all the cyclone separator with Ansys fluent 18.1 with variety of inlet velocity from 15 m/s to 30 m/s, employing Reynolds stress model as turbulent model. The outcome of CFD analysis illustrate that utilizing REPDH in vortex finder of cyclone separator reduces the pressure drop and increased separation efficiency, is well suited for high throughput models such as swift HT and Stairmand HT models also suited for Swift HE models. 4holes model provide the optimum results for these three models. In general, REPDH design modifications are well suited for cyclone separator models whose ratio of vortex finder diameter to main diameter of cyclone separator is not equal to 0.5.