A CFD Study of the Effects of Feed Diameter on the Pressure Drop in Acyclone Separator

Abstract

Abstract This work presents a Computational Fluid Dynamics approach to evaluate the effects of feed diameter on the pressure drop and magnitude velocity in an aerocyclone utilized in feed processing machinery. Traditionally cyclone separators have been used in agro-industry as pre-screening devices to separate coarse suspended particles (diameter>10 µm) from a gas stream, which is subsequently cleaned of fine particles using some other techniques. Hence particle diameter plays a major role in the quality of separation. Study includes five levels of particle diameters (10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm) and their impact on the performance of the cyclone. Pressure drop values were estimated to be 601, 668, 787, 840 and 894 Pa for diameters of 10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm, respectively. Also magnitude velocity values were estimated to be 19.4, 19.6, 20.3, 20.6 and 20.9 ms−1 for diameters of 10, 15, 25, 50 and 100 µm.