The effect of inlet shape on separation performance and flow‐field characteristics in a gas–solid cyclone separator

Abstract

The gas-solid separation experiments were conducted to compare separation performance between cyclone separators with different inlet shapes. Besides, the Reynolds stress model was employed to simulate flow field in different cyclones. The results revealed that the cyclone with a trapezoidal inlet could enhance separation efficiency without almost increasing pressure drop. Compared with the conventional rectangular inlet, a trapezoidal inlet had negligible effect on flow field of cyclone's separation space, and it reduced lip flow and upper dust ring of cyclone. In addition, the cyclone with a trapezoidal inlet could improve the inhomogeneous gas flux distribution at the inlet, which was the root reason why secondary flows in cyclone were inhibited and separation efficiency was enhanced.

Numerical simulation of gas-solid flow in a cyclone separator with additional inlet

“…Their results showed that the use of an inlet double the size of the original case had the best performance, increasing the separation efficiency from 69.97% to 98.6%. The results of numerical and experimental studies by Wei et al [9] showed that by using a trapezoidal inlet channel, the separation efficiency was enhanced compared to that of a cyclone with a rectangular inlet channel, without increasing the pressure drop. Although it had little effect on the flow field inside the cyclone, it restrained particles near the vortex finder.…”