Experimental and numerical investigation on the performance of square cyclones with different vortex finder configurations

The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of varying the vortex finder diameter and its insertion length on the flow field and overall performance in a square cyclone. A total of 15 different vortex finder configurations with 5 different diameters, each having 3 different insertion lengths, were analyzed. An in-depth analysis of flow field inside the separator was conducted by using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry (Stereo-PIV) and large eddy simulation (LES). The former makes use of two cameras that focused simultaneously over the region of interest to record the details of the flow field, whereas the latter approach directly resolves a large part of the flow and provides the three-dimensional time-dependent details of the turbulent flows. The results extracted from PIV and LES-viz. mean tangential, mean axial, and mean radial velocities-were compared, and good agreement was observed between the two. In addition, the separation efficiency and Euler number (Eu) were evaluated experimentally and by using LES. Conclusive results indicate that the geometric shapes of the vortex finder have a significant effect on the performance of square cyclone separators. Decreasing the diameter of the vortex finder resulted in a considerable increase in Eu compared to the base variant (maximal increase in Eu amounted to about 660%). However, increasing the diameter of the vortex finder decreased Eu by about 55%. An optimally configured geometry of the vortex finder increased overall separation efficiency by 16%.