Effects of a Guide Cone on the Flow Field and Performance of a New Dynamic Air Classifier

Abstract

A new dynamic air classifier was designed to address the problems of uneven material dispersion and high dust concentration in industrial applications of turbo air classifiers. This paper presents a study on the use of guide cones in the new dynamic air classifier. The ANSYS-Fluent 19.2 software was implemented to simulate the airflow in the dynamic air classifier, and the impact of the guide cone size on the flow field and classification performance of the dynamic air classifier was investigated. The simulation results indicated that with the increase in the guide cone height, the flow field distribution becomes reasonable and the velocity distributions become uniform. When the guide cone height is greater than twice the distance between the guide cone and the bottom of the rotor cage, there is no discernible change in the flow field distribution and classification efficiency. When the guide cone diameter is approximately 0.9 times the diameter of the rotor cage, the airflow pathline is more reasonable, and the flow field and velocity distributions are more uniform. An improper guide cone diameter and height will worsen the classification environment, resulting in a significant decline in classification performance. The material experimental and discrete phase simulation (DPM) showed that DPM can anticipate the changing trends of the cut size and classification accuracy. This study provides theoretical assistance for the structural design and optimization of an air classifier.