Innovation of vortex finder geometry (tapered in-cylinder out) and additional cooling of body cyclone on velocity flow field, performance, and heat transfer of cyclone separator

Abstract

This paper studies numerical analysis about the effect of the vortex finder (Tapered in-Cylinder out) geometric innovation in a cyclone separator. Four variations of the length of the vortex finder 0.5 Dc, 0.75 Dc, Dc, and 1.25 Dc will be simulated under cooling and without cooling conditions on the velocity flow field, cyclone performance, temperature distribution, and heat transfer. The RSM turbulence model is used to simulate fluid flow. The Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was chosen to predict the phase movement of the particles. The trajectories of particles in the flow are tracked individually using the DPM method. The cooling model is applied assuming a constant temperature on the surface of the cyclone body. The simulation results show similar trends both with experimental studies and numerical simulations. The application of additional cooling to the cyclone, reduced the pressure drop up to 13%. The cyclone collection efficiency showed a non-significant increase but most of the particles collected were drier due to the increasing heat transfer 15–25% in any cases of variation.