Filtration on Hydrocyclone of Optimized Geometric Relationships

Abstract

The filtering hydrocyclone is a solid-liquid separation device patented by the Chemical Engineering School of the Federal University of Uberlândia, which consists of a hydrocyclone whose conical section was replaced by a conical filtering wall. During the operation of these separators, besides underflow and overflow streams, the existence of a filtrate stream generated by the filtering process is found in the permeable conical region of the hydrocyclones. Vieira et al. (2006) got a filtering hydrocyclone that simultaneously presented low Euler Number and cut size diameter because its geometric relationships has been optimized. The objective of this work was to analyze the behavior of this optimized filtering hydrocyclone through computational fluid dynamics and experimental studies. In the same operational conditions of the conventional hydrocyclone, the performance of this optimized filtering hydrocyclone was significantly influenced by the filtration. The filtration caused decreases in the Euler number and increment in the total efficiency.