Numerical investigation on the fluid droplet separation performance of corrugated plate gas-liquid separators

Abstract

Separation and purification technology should be optimized, the performance of corrugated plate gas-liquid separators presently need to be geometrically improved for the low separation efficiency and high pressure cost. This paper mainly investigates the separation performance of corrugated plate gas-liquid separators with different vane types through 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD).The velocity, pressure, and turbulence energy magnitude that are remarkably influenced by vanes’ type are compared, and friction factor (f) and separation efficiency (η) that are correlated to the vane type are numerically analyzed. The fluid film thickness and droplet diameter distribution are predicted, and the variations in pressure drop, grade separation efficiency, and overall separation efficiency are obtained to evaluate the performance of separators. And additionally, the correlations for the collection efficiency as a function of the Stokes number have been found, and the numerical data to those correlations have been fitted. It is found that the separator STV1 contributes mostly in enhancing the separation efficiency but with high pressure drop, and separators PV and SV have low pressure drop and separation efficiency. The separator MV is considered to have optimized performance for the 24.3 Pa and 97.6% under the airflow velocity U = 1.00 m/s, the separator can be used in a wider range of airflow velocity without losing the separation performance. This study can be used as a reference for the design of wave plate separator.