Prevention of Hydrocyclone Choking Through Detection of Sub-Hz Frequency Shift of Vibration Signal

Abstract

Hydrocyclones are extensively used in mineral processing and other industries to separate heavy and coarse particles from light and fine particles, respectively. Due to variation in the density of feed which contains water and particles, the hydrocyclone gets choked during continuous operation. Clearing the choking is a time-consuming and expensive affair which requires shutdown of the hydrocyclone. To prevent this, the hydrocyclone operation needs to be monitored continuously to alarm well before choking happens. A vibration sensing and analysis-based method is proposed in this paper to predict the choking condition well in advance. Vibration signals were collected by varying the solid percentage in the feed input to create choking condition. Vibration signal was processed using Fourier transform to observe the variations under different feed concentrations. It was observed that higher slurry density in the feed input leads to choking of hydrocyclone. Vibration signal which is captured at the apex of the hydrocyclone is recommended here to be used to monitor the operational conditions of the hydrocyclone. After analysis of the captured vibration signals in frequency domain, it was found that there is shift of specific frequencies due to an increase in slurry density. By monitoring the shift in peak frequencies in those frequency ranges, the choking can be detected and cleared well in advance to avoid a shutdown of hydrocyclone.