The statistical characteristic study of bubble trajectory in an axial separator by a Lagrange method

Abstract

Centrifugal separation is a kind of common technology, which is used in a broad range of applications. And the axial inlet separators using the swirler to generate vortex are caught great attention owing to their compact size, low pressure drop and high separation efficiency. Some axial separators with different light phase outlet designs are introduced and their macroscopic parameters such as separation efficiency and pressure drop are investigated under different flow conditions. In order to figure out the change on flow field at different conditions, a Lagrange method was used to analyze the bubble trajectory inside an axial separator with two light phase outlets. In this paper, the single bubble was injected into the swirl chamber and the motion of the bubble was tracked by a high-speed camera. Besides, separation length defined as a parameter to evaluate the swirl intensity in the pipe was processed by statistical method. The experimental results show that a higher Reynolds number and a larger split ratio lead to a smaller separation length. Additionally, improving the proportion of split ratio of light phase outlet 1 is effective to decrease the separation length.