Experimental And Numerical Study Of A Hydrocyclone With The Modification Of Geometrical Structure

Combining the existing research results of our group,two kinds of structuremodified hydrocyclones are proposed in this paper,which exhibit better performance than the traditional ones.In type-1,in which the outer edge of the vortex finder is changed from circle to hexagon,the separation efficiency can increase by 18.1% compared to the conventional hydrocyclone,while type-3,with a hexagonal conical section,can save energy consumption up to 49.7% according to the results of experiments.Type-2 is a standard structural hydrocyclone used as a comparison.To determine the reasons for the improvement in performance,numerical simulations are conducted to observe the internal flow field of the three kinds of hydrocyclones.Tangential,radial,axial velocities and pressure distrubution are all studied in this research according to the simulation results.Comparing the velocity distribution can we get the conclusion that the radial velocity has a closer relationship with separation efficiency.The modification of vortex finder can increase the radial velocity and enlarge the area of forced vortex finder.The change of cone section can effectively reduce the internal pressure of hydrocyclones.Based on the analysis,the separation mechanisms of different types of hydrocyclones are proposed.Further,the air core,as a unique flow field phenomenon of hydrocyclone is captured by a CCD camera.It proves that the air core is a factor correlative to the flow pattern and is supportive of the improvement.The smoke area,which has many small air bubbles around the vortex finder,is defined in this work.The existence of the smoke area has a negative influence on energy transfer and separation efficiency.It is meaningful to focus on eliminating the formation of smoke area in the future.