Effect of inlet configuration on hydrocyclone performance
(National Engineering Research Center for Integrated Utilization of Salt Lake Resource, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China)
Abstract: Inlet configuration is important parameter of hydrocyclones, which has great impact on the classification performance. The effects of inlet configuration on the precise classification were studied by computational fluid dynamics under various combinations of inlet diameter and inlet velocity. The results showed that a high sharpness of classification was achieved with specific inlet diameter and inlet velocity. The separation efficiency of the coarse particles by underflow significantly decreased when inlet had an oversize diameter owing to a stronger short-circuit flow. It is resulted from the chaotic flow and the stronger pressure gradient around the vortex finder. Meanwhile, a low separation efficiency of the fine particles by overflow was achieved when inlet velocity was high, which indicated a low sharpness caused by the overlarge centrifugal force.
Key words: hydrocyclone; inlet configuration; separation sharpness; computational fluid dynamics