Design of liquid–liquid separation hydrocyclones using parabolic and hyperbolic swirl chambers for efficiency enhancement

Abstract

The wall profile of the swirl chamber greatly impacts the internal flow structures and separation efficiency of a liquid-liquid separation hydrocyclone. The objective of this study is to examine the effects of parabolic and hyperbolic wall profiles of hydrocyclone swirl chamber on the internal flow structures and separation efficiency based on the numerical simulations. The internal flow structures observed for the different wall profiles of swirl chamber motivates the redesign of hydrocyclone geometry to achieve enhanced separation efficiency. Results show that, for a dilute system (oil concentration less than 1%), the hyperbolic and parabolic swirl chambers without a tail pipe yield, respectively, 16.5% and 25% higher separation efficiency for a droplet size of 30 μm when compared with a conical swirl chamber without tail pipe. However, the hyperbolic swirl chamber has a greater potential for the reduction of effective length of hydrocyclone with maintaining high separation efficiency. In addition, a hydrocyclone with truncated hyperbolic swirl chamber and tail pipe provides very long reverse flow core and yields 17% and 33% higher efficiency than that of full hyperbolic and conical swirl chambers without tail pipe, respectively.

Membrane separation as a pre-treatment process for oily saline water

“…Liquid-liquid Hydrocyclones are used to separate mixtures utilizing the differences between the centrifugal and the drag forces [67]. They are highly efficient and attractive for oil/water separation.…”

Optimising small hydrocyclone design using 3D printing and CFD simulations

“…It combines four sequential steps, namely designing the small hydrocyclone geometries, simulating the different hydrocyclones and selecting the optimum design, 3D printing the selected design, and testing this new optimised hydrocyclone. In this work, small hydrocyclones with parabolic walls, similar to those studied by Motin and Benard [14], were designed and compared with their counterparts with conic walls previously used in Section 3.2. Fig.…”

“…These studies found that the length of the vortex finder had little effect on the recovery of solids for suspensions at low concentration [12] and that a hydrocyclone with concave shape resulted in higher velocities of the fluid, which might increase the recovery of solids [13]. Hydrocyclones of 26 mm diameter with parabolic, hyperbolic and conic walls have also been modelled [14], with the simulations predicting that a hydrocyclone with a parabolic wall resulted in better separation. For smaller hydrocyclones, the effect of different inlet configurations in 20 mm hydrocyclones has been explored [15]; the authors reported that a hydrocyclone with 4 inlets distributed along the cylindrical body improved the recovery of solids.…”

Improving Separation Efficiency of Particle less than 10 Microns in Hydrocyclone

“…Research has also shown that Larger cone angle decreases separation efficiency [7], larger underflow diameter lower separation efficiency [8] [5] and increased overflow diameter decreases the separation efficiency [5] [8]. Some researchers have looked at the use of smaller diameter hydrocyclone to improve efficiency [9] [10] [11] while another researcher had some improved efficiency by changing the conical section of the hydrocyclone to hyperbolic and parabolic shape [12]. All the journals reviewed for geometry parameter have one thing in common; droplet size of efficiency as reviewed is 10μm and above which has led to the conclusion that changes in geometrical dimension alone have a great effect on large particles collection/separation and little effect on finer particles [13].…”