A CFD Study of the Effect of Vortex Finder Thickness on Gas Cyclone Separator Performance

Three-dimensional, time-dependent Eulerian-Lagrangian simulations of the turbulent gas-solid flow in a cyclone separator have been performed. The effects of geometrical and operational variables on the separation efficiency in a cyclone separator have been investigated. The flow features are examined in terms of flow field, pressure drop, particle trajectories and separation efficiency. In the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of gas cyclone, the Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) that is a suitable turbulence model was used. The trajectory of the discrete phase particle is obtained by integrating the force balance on the particle which can be written in a Lagrangian reference frame. In this study, grade efficiencies have been computed and compared with the experimental values for cyclones of different vortex finder thickness. The results show that the separation efficiency will be changed with the change of the vortex finder thickness and the main reason of it is the reduction of particle escaping to centric upward flow and inlet flow momentum improvement in the cylinder zone of cyclone.