Experimental Study of a New Hydrocyclone for Multi-Density Particles Separation

Abstract

A new structure of hydrocyclone is designed to meet the demand of separating particles heavier or lighter than water simultaneously. Based on the conventional hydrocyclone, the structural modifications with a section in the middle and a volute chamber on the top of the hydrocyclone to accumulate the separated low density particles. Some factors that influence the separation efficiency of hydrocyclone were investigated in this paper. For the heavy phase, those influencing factors included the inlet flow rate and underflow split ratio. For the light one, different outlets for discharging the light phase were taken into account. The results show that there exists an optimum inlet flow rate for a series of underflow split ratios. The top outlet for separating light phase particles is better than the side outlet's.

Keywords:

• Hydrocyclone
• light phase particle
• multi-density particles separation
• separation efficiency
• short circuit flow

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financing support from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.