Effect of Cylindrical Height of a Hydrocyclone for the Flow Field and Separation Performance

This paper investigates the influence of cylindrical height of a hydrocyclone for the separation performance and flow field utilizing RSM turbulence model, VOF and Mixture model. The VOF model’s prediction results indicate that under the same feeding conditions, The air column stability time and diameter gradually increase when the cylindrical height increases, and increasing the height of cylinder can reduce the static pressure and pressure drop, thereby increasing the treatment capacity and reducing energy consumption; at the same time, with the height of the cylinder increases, the peak tangential velocity of the column section decreases; the peak tangential velocity of the conical section is the largest when L=1.5D, which is beneficial to improving the hydrocyclone’s separation performance. The prediction results of the MIXTURE model suggested that: when the hydrocyclone is used for fine particle grading operation, an appropriate column height of L=1.5∼2.0D is recommended; whereas, for coarse particle grading operation, a smaller column height should be considered.