Numerical study on pressure drop and filtration efficiency of gas–solid flow through axial cyclone separators

Abstract

The separation of particulate matter from incoming gas flow is necessary for different industrial applications, and this filtration process is primarily done by cyclone separators. In axial inlet cyclone separators, a swirling motion is imparted to the incoming flow by means of a swirl generator and particle separation is achieved by centrifugal separation. In this paper, the gas-particle flow through an axial inlet cyclone separator is analysed by the Eulerian–Lagrangian CFD approach using the open-source package OpenFOAM. The turbulent flow field is modelled using Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes equations with RNG k–e model, and the particle trajectory is calculated by discrete phase modelling. The study mainly focuses on the modelling and simulation of the dispersed flow, the development of the turbulent flow field inside the cyclone filter and the influence of the solid phase on the flow field. The simulation results show that the solver effectively models the flow field and the centrifugal separation of particles. The analysis of particle trajectory and the effect of particle density on the flow with both uniform and varying inlet particle distribution are also discussed.