Study on the Desliming Performance of a Novel Hydrocyclone Sand Washer

Abstract

A novel hydrocyclone sand washer featured by connecting a cylindrical hydrocyclone and a conical-cylindric hydrocyclone in series was developed to improve the poor grading performance in current machine-made sand processing technology. The former hydroycyclone with a flat bottom was designed to enhance the centrifugal intensity, thereby achieving the pre-grading of fine and coarse particles and ensuring the discharge of most fine mud particles from the overflow pipe. The latter hydrocyclone was designed to achieve the secondary fine separation and therefore reduce the content of fine particles in the underflow product. Firstly, the flow field inside the consecutive hydrocyclones was simulated using an RSM and VOF model. The DPM model was introduced to trace the particle motion trajectory and validate the feasibility of hydrocyclone separation. Then, the experimental study was performed using the control variable method, and the effects of the first-section overflow pipe diameter, the feeding rate, and the mud–sand mixing ratio on the desliming performance were examined. Results show that the content of particles with a diameter of below 75μm in the second-section underflow drops significantly after the separation in the hydrocyclone sand washer. When the first-section overflow pipe diameter, the feeding rate, and the mud–sand mixing ratio are set to 34 mm, 60 kg/h and 1:1, respectively, the desliming rate of the novel hydrocyclone sand washer can reach 94.31% and the loss rate of quartz sand is only 1.28%.

Effect of spiral vanes width on the separation performance of a hydrocyclone

“…Multi-phase flow models are widely used, such as the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model (Mokni et al, 2015), Mixture model (Su and Zhang, 2022), and Euler model (Zhang and Ni, 2022). Yang et al (2022) applied RSM and VOF models to simulate the flow field of continuous hydrocyclones, introduced the DPM model to track the particle trajectories, and conducted experimental investigations. Ye et al (2022) and used RSM and two-fluid model (TFM) to simulate the flow field and classification efficiency inside the hydrocyclone, and verified the feasibility of the method.…”

Classification Performance of a Novel Hydraulic Classifier Equipped with a W-Shaped Reflector

“…Figure 1 shows the structure of the classifier embedded with a W-shaped reflector. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been applied to the study of classifiers by many scholars [23][24][25], and its accuracy has been verified. In the present research, numerical simulation was performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to investigate Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been applied to the study of classifiers by many scholars [23][24][25], and its accuracy has been verified.…”

“…Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been applied to the study of classifiers by many scholars [23][24][25], and its accuracy has been verified. In the present research, numerical simulation was performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to investigate Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been applied to the study of classifiers by many scholars [23][24][25], and its accuracy has been verified. In the present research, numerical simulation was performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to investigate the effects of the W-shaped reflector structure on the classification performance and to determine the optimized structure.…”