Study of flow behaviour in a three-product cyclone using computational fluid dynamics (original) (raw)
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Advances in Mechanical Engineering, 2010
Effectiveness and efficiency of hydro-cyclone separators are highly dependent on their geometrical parameters and flow characteristics. Performance of the hydro-cyclone can, therefore, be improved by modifying the geometrical parameters or flow characteristics. The mining and chemical industries are faced with problems of separating ore-rich stones from the nonore-rich stones. Due to this problem a certain amount of precious metals is lost to the dumping sites. Plant managers try to solve these problems by stockpiling what could be useless stones, so that they can be reprocessed in the future. Reprocessing is not a sustainable approach, because the reprocessed material would give lower yield as compared to the production costs. Particulate separation in a hydro-cyclone has been investigated in this paper, by using computational fluid dynamics. The paper investigated the influence of various flow and geometric parameters on particulate separation. Optimal parameters for efficient sep...
Studies on the understanding mechanism of air core and vortex formation in a hydrocyclone
Chemical Engineering Journal, 2008
A hydrocyclone is cyclone that uses water as a bulk fluid. The advantages like low cost, no moving parts, little maintenance cost and high capacity make it attractive for industrial use. During the operation, due to the low pressure at cyclone axis, a back-flow of gas can occur which then forms a gas-core. This gas-core affects the separation efficiency. This gas-core was eliminated by inserting a solid rod. Experiments were made in a newly constructed hydrocyclone for different inlet flow rate in presence as well as in absence of gas-core to qualify the pressure drop characteristics of the hydrocyclone. Effect of gas-core on the pressure between different specific locations was studied. FLUENT as a CFD-modelling tool was used for hydrodynamic study.
Numerical investigation of the hydrocyclone vortex finder depth on separation efficiency
MATEC Web of Conferences, 2021
Hydrocyclones are devices used in numerous chemicals, food, and mineral-related industrial sectors for the separation of fine particles. A d50 mm hydrocyclone was modelled with the use of the Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, ANSYS® Fluent 2021 R1. The vortex finder depth was varied from 20 mm, 30 mm, and 35 mm to observe the effects of pressure drop and separation efficiency from a varied vortex finder depth and characteristics of the air core. The numerical methods validated the results observed from different parameters such as volume fraction characteristics based on CFD simulations. The tangential and axial velocities increased as the vortex finder length increased. It was found that as the depth of the vortex finder is increased, particle re-entrainment time in the underflow stream increases, and separation efficiency improved.
CFD study of the multiphase flow in classifying hydrocyclone: effect of cone geometry
This paper presents a numerical study of the gas–liquid– solid flow in hydrocyclones by a recently developed continuum-based multiphase flow model. The applicability of the model has been verified by a good agreement between the calculated and measured flow fields and separation efficiency (Kuang et al., 2012), and is used here to study the effect of cone length from a feed solids concentration of 4 to 30% (by volume). The numerical results show that for a standard design of cone section, decreasing cone length leads to the decrease of separation efficiency and the increase of inlet pressure drop for a given feed solids concentration. It is also shown that the performance of the cyclone with a short cone section is very sensitive to feed solids concentration.
CFD Simulation Studies on a 19 Cone Angle Hydrocyclone
2006
Hydrocyclone being in practice for classification applications are of low cone angle typically at 10°. The details on the simulation of such hydrocyclone are well reported. The present study is an attempt to simulate the water flow behaviour inside a 3 inch 19° cone angle hydrocyclone, which in general is applied for processing intermediate size coal and is popularly know as heavy medium cyclone. A 3D axi-symmetric model of standard 3" heavy medium cyclone geometry is generated. The computational domain is divided into unstructured grid having 115053 tetrahedral volumes using GAMBIT preprocessor. A segregated solver with steady state 3-D double precision scheme was used for model computations assigning a convergence value of 1e-06. For predicting swirling flow characteristics prevailing inside the cyclone, Pressure Interpolation Scheme (PRESTO) is used. Reynolds stress model (RSM), which was reported to account with greater precision for the effects of swirl, rotation etc. was selected for turbulence calculations. For obtaining the pressure field inside the system SIMPLE algorithm scheme was used. Higher-order Quadratic Upwind Interpolation (QUICK) spatial discretisation scheme was used for field variables interpolation from cell centers to faces of the control volumes. Tangential, axial velocity profiles and pressure distributions are presented and the water-split values obtained through simulation are compared with the experimental results.
CFD simulation and experimental validation studies on hydrocyclone
Minerals Engineering, 2007
Hydrocyclone is a key unit operation in mineral process industry and simulation of which using CFD techniques is gaining popularity in process design and optimization. The success of the simulation methodology depends primarily on how best the results are matching with the experimental values and the computational time it requires for obtaining such results. In the present investigation, attempts are made to develop a methodology for simulating the performance of hydrocyclone. Initial work included comparison of experimental and simulated results generated using different turbulence models i.e., standard k-e, k-e RNG and RSM in terms of water throughput and split with the help of suitably designed experiments. Among the three modeling methods, predictions using RSM model were found better in agreement with experimental results with a marginal error between 4% and 8%. Parametric studies have indicated that a decrease in the spigot opening increased the upward vertical velocity of water more compared to a decrease in the downward vertical velocity. An increase in the inlet pressure has increased the axial velocities of water in both the upward and downward directions and increased the mass flow rates through the cyclone. An increase in the inlet pressure has also increased the static pressure differential along the radius within the cyclone body and hence more water split into overflow. Further, an increase in the inlet pressure has also increased the tangential velocities and reduced the cyclone cut size. The simulated particle distribution values generated using the particle injection technique are found matching with the experimental results while achieving cut sizes between 4.9 and 14.0 lm.
Computer Simulation Development of Hydro-cyclonePerformance in Solid Liquid Separation
IRC, 2020
The separation of particle and fluid using device called hydro-cyclone has been widely adapted in various industry especially oil and gas field. The solids mainly the sand flow out from the well with the oil need to be separated out before the oil can be flown to the production facility as sand can corrode the equipment and lead to higher cost consumption for the production. In oil field, the produced crude from the well may vary in the properties especially the density and the viscosity. The two properties are among the properties that will influent the separation performance of the hydrocyclone. However, significant of the relation between these parameters to the separation efficiency is unclear and to investigate it experimentally will be expensive and time consuming. The objective of this study primarily to investigate the relation of the oil density and viscosity to the separation performance of the hydro-cyclone operating at several inlet velocity by simulation. To do that, the cyclone model will be developed in Computational Fluid Dynamic software, Ansys FLUENT to investigate the relation of these parameters. Three type of crude oil of difference API heaviness and inlet velocity will be used as manipulated variables. The outcome of the study shown that the separation efficiency increases with velocity and decrease with medium viscosity and density. V ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to several individuals for supporting me throughout my Final Year Project. First, I wish to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr Mohammad Shakir Nasif, for his patience, enthusiasm, insightful comments, invaluable suggestions, helpful information, practical advice and unceasing ideas which helped me at all times in my research and writing of this dissertation. His immense knowledge, profound experience and professional expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) has enabled me to complete this research successfully. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to Prof. Ir Dr Shaharin Anwar bin Sulaiman for his comment on correcting my research during the last proposal presentation. My sincere thanks also go to UTP and IRC, which provided me which the enough information resources to conduct the study. Additionally, thanks to my classmates, and friends who always gave advises on conducting the CFD simulation work, cheered me up and gave a moral support to me. Lastly, I wish to thanks to my family who always support and encouraging me to finish my study.
Differential classification of dense material in a three-product cyclone
Minerals Engineering, 2004
A hydrocyclone with two concentric vortex finders, named the three-product cyclone, has been successfully tested in the Platinum industry for classifying UG2 ore which contains a high density chromite and a low density PGM carrying silica component. The low density silica reports to the overflow even when not sufficiently fine enough for flotation, which results in loss of recovery through over-size silica component material in the float feed.
Mathematical and Computational Applications
Hydrocyclones are devices used in numerous areas of the chemical, food, and mineral industries to separate fine particles. A hydrocyclone with a diameter of d50 mm was modeled using the commercial Simcenter STAR-CCM+13 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation package. The numerical methods confirmed the results of the different parameters, such as the properties of the volume fraction, based on CFD simulations. Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) and the combined technique of volume of fluid (VOF) and discrete element model (DEM) for water and air models were selected to evaluate semi-implicit pressure-linked equations and combine the momentum with continuity laws to obtain derivatives of the pressure. The targeted particle sizes were in a range of 8–100 microns for a dewatering application. The depth of the vortex finder was varied to 20 mm, 30 mm, and 35 mm to observe the effects of pressure drop and separation efficiency. The split water ratio increased toward a 50% split of overflo...
Chemical Engineering Science, 2007
Hydrocyclones are getting more and more interest from various industries. They are widely used to separate particulates from liquid at high throughput because of their advantages like simple structure, low cost, large capacity and small volume, require little way of maintenance and support structure. Modeling of complex and multiphase flow behavior inside the hydrocyclone is done usually with the help of computational fluid dynamic study. Current study involves experimental investigation of separation performance characteristics of the hydrocyclone using new design parameters. For experimental purpose, a new hydrocyclone was designed with insertion of solid rod, at central portion of conical section of hydrocyclone, inside the hydrocyclone . By which air core could be eliminated effectively and hydrocyclone performance is improved. This effect may be observed due to reduction of radial and axial components of velocity and turbulence in the area near the entrance of the vortex finder. Therefore, the flow field characteristics inside the hydrocyclone with no air core become more suitable for separation. Also the effect of flow rate, vortex finder depths, air core and particle interaction were studied experimentally. A new arrangement was suggested to eliminate the air core formed inside the hydrocyclone. In this case, effect of diameter and height of solid rod inserted inside the hydrocyclone with changing total inlet flow rate was studied experimentally. Three-dimensional geometry and meshing of hydrocyclone is created in Gambit, preprocessor of commercial software—Fluent, for hydrodynamic study.