Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622

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Advanced Powder Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apt

Original Research Paper

Numerical study of flow field in new design cyclone separators with one,
two and three tangential inlets
Hamed Safikhani ⇑, Javid Zamani, Mohammadreza Musa
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak 38156-88349, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Numerical study of the fluid flow and particle dynamics is presented by numerical techniques to charac-
Received 24 July 2017 terize the performance of new design cyclone separators with one, two and three tangential inlets. The
Received in revised form 17 November 2017 design of this cyclone is based on the idea of improving cyclone performance by increasing the vortex
Accepted 2 December 2017
length. This cyclone differs from a conventional cyclone with the separation space. Instead of conical part,
Available online 16 December 2017
the separation space of this cyclone consists of an outer cylinder and a vortex limiter. The Reynolds aver-
aged Navier–Stokes equations with Reynolds stress turbulence model (RSM) are solved by use of the
Keywords:
finite volume method based on the SIMPLE pressure correction algorithm in the computational domain.
New cyclone separators
Number of inlets
The Eulerian-Lagrangian computational procedure is used to predict particles tracking in the cyclones.
Tangential inlets The velocity fluctuations are simulated using the Discrete Random Walk (DRW). In the results the effects
Gas-solid flow of number of inlets on the different important parameters such as pressure drop, collection efficiency,
CFD axial velocity and turbulence are investigated and deeply discussed. Contours of velocity, pressure and
turbulent kinetic energy within these cyclones with different number of inlets are shown. The results
show that the cyclone with three inlets has more collection efficiency, less pressure drop and less turbu-
lence distribution with respect to cyclones with one and two inlets which is good in cyclones perfor-
mance. Generally it is recommended to use the new cyclone designs with higher number of inlets.
Ó 2017 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder
Technology Japan. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Cyclones are widely used in the air pollution control and gas–
solid separation for aerosol sampling and industrial applications.
With the advantages of relative simplicity to fabricate, low cost
to operate, and well adaptability to extremely harsh conditions,
the cyclone separators have become one of the most important
particle removal devices which are preferably utilized in scientific
and engineering fields.
There are many geometric and operational parameters influ-
enced the cyclone performance. Starting with Alexander [1], many
researches have been performed to improve cyclone performance
by evaluating the effects of geometric and operational parameters.
The effect of the cyclone inlet dimensions on the cyclone perfor-
mance has been performed numerically by Elsayed & Lacor [2].
They found that the effect of inlet width is more significant than
the inlet height especially for collection efficiency. Zhao et al. [3]
compared the performance of two types of cyclones with the con-
ventional single inlet and spiral double inlets. Their numerical
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: h-safikhani@araku.ac.ir (H. Safikhani).
results show that, the new type cyclone separator using the adding
spiral double inlet can improve the symmetry of gas flow pattern
and enhance the particle separation efficiency. The effects of cone
dimension on the cyclone performance were also investigated in
the literature [4–6]. Researchers showed that when the cone
dimension is larger than the gas outlet dimension, reduction in
cone size resulted in higher collection efficiency without signifi-
cantly increasing the pressure drop. In the investigation of Yoshida
et al. [7], various types of apex cones were used at the inlet part of
the dust box. They found that the effect of the apex cone angle on
the collection efficiency decreases at high inlet velocity conditions.
Effects of a cone prolonged with a vertical tube on the collection
efficiency of cyclone were also studied [8,9]. The effects of a
counter-cone in the bottom of the cyclone on the cyclone perfor-
mance have performed [10–12]. The effects of the shape and diam-
eter of the vortex finder on the cyclone’s performance were also
studied by many researchers [13,14]. The effects of the cyclone
height were studied by Safikhani et al. [15] and Hoffman et al.
[16]. Performances of square cyclones were investigated by some
researchers [17–19].
Up to now, different cyclone designs have been presented in the
literature. One of them is the double cyclone which was presented

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apt.2017.12.002
0921-8831/Ó 2017 The Society of Powder Technology Japan. Published by Elsevier B.V. and The Society of Powder Technology Japan. All rights reserved.
612 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622
and analyzed by Zhu et al. [20], Xiang and Lee [4] and Lim et al.
[21]. They found that the mentioned cyclone has a lower pressure
drop but has not higher collection efficiency than a conventional
cyclone. However, the collection efficiency of the double cyclone
with electric field increased greatly with the increasing the applied
voltage. Another type of cyclone called the circumfluent cyclone
was presented and investigated by Wang et al. [22]. They investi-
gated experimentally its collection efficiency and pressure distri-
bution, and compared its characteristics with the conventional
one. The results showed that the collection efficiency of this
cyclone is higher by 8% than that of a conventional one and the
pressure drop within this cyclone is only one half or one third of
that of the conventional cyclone.
Fig. 1. Schematic comparison of new cyclones and conventional ones.
Fig. 2. Perspective and top views of new cyclones with one, two and three tangential inlets.
Recently Karagoz et al. [23] presented a new design cyclone
separator. The design of their cyclone was based on the idea of
improving cyclone efficiency by increasing the vortex length. Their
cyclone was different from the conventional cyclones with the sep-
aration space. In fact instead of conical part, the separation space of
that cyclone consists of an outer cylinder and a vortex limiter. They
experimentally investigated the effects of the vortex limiter posi-
tion on the cyclone performance. Safikhani and Mehrabian [24]
investigated the numerical simulations for the parametric study
of Karagoz cyclones. They showed the effects of different geomet-
rical parameters on the new cyclones performance. Safikhani [25]
has investigated multi-objective optimization on new design
cyclone separators and finally presented the Pareto front of such
cyclones.
The complexity of the gas–solid flow pattern in cyclones has
long been a matter of many experimental and theoretical works.
At present, laser Doppler anemometry (LDA) and hot-wire
anemometry are frequently employed to study experimentally
the flow structure in the cyclones. As for the theoretical work, com-
putational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes have proven to be a useful
tool for simulating cyclonic gas flows. Recently, research efforts
by computational fluid dynamics are frequently carried out for
the resolution of flow field and dust particle behavior with differ-
ent degree of numerical and modeling accuracy in order to assist
in the time consuming experimental works. In conjunction with
the complex flow structure, numerical simulation is momentarily
Table 1
False time steps used for the simulation.
Parameters False time step
Pressure 0.2
u (x-velocity) 0.4
v (y-velocity) 0.4
w (z-velocity) 0.4
k (turbulent kinetic energy) 0.5
e (turbulent dissipation rate) 0.5
Reynolds stresses 0.5
 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622 613

not able to completely substitute experiments but can reduce, to a 2. Numerical modeling
certain degree, experimental costs for design and optimization.
CFD has a great potential to predict the flow field characteristics 2.1. Geometry
and particle trajectories inside the cyclone as well as the pressure
drop (Griffiths and Boysan [26]). The complicated swirling turbu- The design of new cyclone is based on the idea that the vortex
lent flow in a cyclone places great demands on the numerical tech- length and separation performance can be increased by decreasing
niques and the turbulence models employed in the CFD codes. friction losses in a cyclone. The new design differs from a classical
Raoufi et al. [14] used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to sim- cyclone with the separation space. It has inner and outer cylinders
ulate and optimize vortex finder of conventional cyclones. Recently without a conical part, and a vortex limiter. The flow enters tan-
an Australian research group have investigated different fields in gentially into the inner cylinder which has the main frictional sur-
CFD modeling of different types of cyclones [27–30].
As numerical investigations have an important role to better
understanding of the flow parameters, this study is intended to
obtain the effects of number of inlets on the performance of new
cyclones by CFD simulations within those cyclones with one, two
and three inlets. Contours of velocity, pressure and turbulent
kinetic energy within these cyclones with different number of
inlets are shown.

Table 2
Geometrical parameters and operating conditions in numerical simulations.

Parameter Values
Dimensionless position of the vortex limiter (L/D1) 1.7
Dimensionless vortex limiter diameter (D3/D1) 1
Dimensionless vortex finder length (S/D1) 0.5
Particle feed rate (g/min) 15
Particle density (kg/m3) 1300
Temperature (k) 288
Inlet velocity (m/s) 8.75, 17.5, 35
Volumetric flow rate (m3/s) 20.75, 41.5, 83
Fig. 4. Cumulative particle size distributions investigated in the present study.

Fig. 3. A sample of generated grid for numerical study of new cyclones (two inlets).
614 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622

Table 3
Comparison of numerical, theoretical and experimental D50.

Dust PSD D50

qP MMD/GSD Experimental Numerical
A 1.77 20/2 2.74 2.41
B 1.82 21/1.9 3.75 3.32
C 1.87 23/1.8 3.60 3.151
D 1.52 19/1.4 – 7.1
E 2.73 13/1.7 4.40 4.07

Table 4
The components of Wang’s pressure drop theory.

Components Definition
P e ¼ C 2 VP in Entry loss, C 2  1, VP = Velocity pressure
P k ¼ VPin  VP out Kinetic energy loss
P f ¼ CVP in Frictional loss, C 1D3D ¼ 0:14, C 2D2D ¼ 0:28, C 1D2D ¼ 0:15
P r ¼ qV 2in ðR=r0  1Þ Rotational loss, r0 = radius of the vortex interface,
R = cyclone body radius
P 0 ¼ C 3 VPout Pressure loss in the inner vortex and exit tube,
C 3  1:8

Fig. 5. Comparison of numerical, experimental and analytical result for pressure

drop (pa).
face and serves as vortex creator. The flow spirals down below the
inner cylinder almost without wall friction through the outer cylin-
der and then turns back from the limiter plate towards the exit
pipe. The vortex limiter can be moved up and down unable to
adjust the vortex length. The particles move towards the wall of
the outer cylinder and are separated from the vortical flow under
the action of centrifugal forces and collected on the bottom of
the outer cylinder. That is the main separation process occurs in
the outer cylinder. The new design has also the advantages of easy
manufacture and low maintenance. Fig. 1 compares the schematic
of geometry of new design and conventional cyclones. In the pre-
sent study three types of new design cyclones with one, two and
three inlets are numerically investigated. Fig. 2 shows the sche-
matic perspective and top view of such performed cyclones.

Fig. 6. Variation of four important parameters in cyclones (a) total pressure drop, (b) collection efficiency, (c) maximum axial velocity and (d) turbulent kinetic energy vs.
inlet flow rate for new cyclones with one, two and three tangential inlets.
 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622 615

 
2.2. Governing equations j
@u i
@u 1
Pij ¼  Rik þ Rjk ; P ¼ P ij ð4Þ
@xk @xk 2
For an incompressible fluid flow, the equation of continuity and
With P being the fluctuating kinetic energy production. mt is the tur-
balance of momentum are given as:
bulent (eddy) viscosity; and rk ¼ 1, C 1 ¼ 1:8, C 2 ¼ 0:6 are empirical
i
@u constants [31].
¼0 ð1Þ
@xi The transport equation for the turbulence dissipation rate, e, is
given as:
i
@u i
@u 1 @ P @2ui @  
þ uj ¼ þm  Rij ð2Þ @e @e @  m  @e e @ ui e2
@t @xj q @xi @xj @xj @xj þ uj ¼ m þ te  C e1 Rij  C e2 ð5Þ
@t @xj @xj r @xj K @xj K
where u  is the mean pres-
 i is the mean velocity, xi is the position, P
sure, q is the constant gas density, m is the kinematic viscous and In Eq. (5), K ¼ 12 u0i u0i is the fluctuating kinetic energy, and e is the
turbulence dissipation rate. The values of constants are
Rij ¼ u0i u0j is the Reynolds stress tensor. Here, u0i ¼ ui  ui is the ith
fluctuating velocity component.
re ¼ 1:3; C e1 ¼ 1:44 and C e2 ¼ 1:92.
The dispersion of small particles is strongly affected by the
The RSTM provides differential transport equations for evalua-
instantaneous fluctuation of fluid velocity. The turbulence fluctua-
tion of the turbulence stress components where the turbulence
tions are random functions of space and time. In this study, a dis-
production terms are defined as:

   crete random walk (DRW) model is used for evaluating the
@ @ @ mt @ @ uj i
@u instantaneous velocity fluctuations. The values of u0 ; v 0 and w0 that
Rij þ uk Rij ¼ R  Rik þ Rjk
@t @xk @xk rk @xk ij @xk @xk prevail during the lifetime of the turbulent eddy, Te are sampled by
   
e 2 2 2 assuming that they obey a Gaussian probability distribution. In this
 C1 Rij  dij K  C 2 Pij  dij P  dij e ð3Þ model the instantaneous velocity in the ith direction is given as:
K 3 3 3

Fig. 7. Pressure, axial velocity and turbulent contours at the top plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets (Qi = 0.02 m3/s).
616 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u0i ¼ n u0i u0i
In Eq. (6), n is a zero-mean, unit-variance, normally distributed ran-
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
dom number, u0i u0i is the local root mean-square (RMS) fluctuation
velocity in the ith direction, and the summation convention on i is
suspended.
The characteristic lifetime of the eddy is defined as a constant
given by:
T e ¼ 2T l
where T l is the eddy turn over time given as, T e ¼ 0:3 Ke in the RSTM.
The other option allows for a long –normal random variation of
eddy lifetime that is given by:
T e ¼ T l log r
where r is a uniform random number between 0 and 1. The particle
is assumed to interact with the fluid fluctuation field, which stays
fixed over the eddy lifetime. When the eddy lifetime is reached, a
new value of the instantaneous velocity is obtained by introducing
a new value of n in Eq. (6).
There are two main approaches for modeling multiphase flows
that account for the interactions between the phases. These are the
Fig. 8. Pressure, axial velocity and turbulent contours at the top plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets (Qi = 0.04 m3/s).
ð6Þ Eulerian-Eulerian and the Eulerian-Lagrangian approaches. The
former is based on the concept of interpenetrating continua, for
which all the phases are treated as continuous media with proper-
ties analogous to those of a fluid. The Eulerian-Lagrangian
approach adopts a continuum description for the liquid phase
and tracks the discrete phase using Lagrangian particle trajectory
analysis.
In the present study, one way coupling method is used to solve
the two phase flow and the Eulerian-Lagrangian approach is imple-
ð7Þ mented for simulation of second discrete phase (particles). In this
model, air is the continuous phase and the particles are treated
as the dispersed discrete phase. The volume-averaged and steady
state Navier-stokes equation is solved for the gas phase. The parti-
cle motions are simulated by the Lagrangian trajectory analysis
procedure. Forces acting on the dispersed phase include drag and
ð8Þ
gravity. The discrete phase equations are solved using Runge-
Kutta method for particles.
To calculate the trajectories of particles in the flow, the discrete
phase model (DPM) was used to track individual particles through
the continuum fluid. The particle loading in a cyclone separator is
typically small, and therefore, it can be safely assumed that the
presence of the particles does not affect the flow field (one-way
coupling).
 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622 617

The equation of motion of small particles, including the effect of p
uj  uj d
nonlinear drag and gravitational forces, is given by: Rep ¼ ð13Þ
m
3v C D Rep
p
dui
¼ 2
ðui  uip Þ þ g i ð9Þ The particle equation of motion requires the instantaneous tur-
dt 4d S bulent fluid velocity values at particle locations. The mean liquid
velocity was evaluated by the use of the Reynolds stress transport
dxi
¼ upi ð10Þ turbulence model (RSTM) and the fluctuation velocity components
dt were calculated from Eq. (6). The drag coefficient for spherical par-
Here, upi is the velocity of the particle and xi is its position, d is the ticles is calculated by using the correlations developed by Morsi
particle diameter, S is the ratio of particle density to fluid density, and Alexander [33]. The ordinary differential equation (Eq. (10))
and g i is the acceleration of gravity. The term on the right hand side is integrated along the trajectory of an individual particle.
of Eq. (10) is the drag force due to the relative slip between the par- Collection efficiency statistics are obtained by releasing a spec-
ticle and the fluid. The drag force is, generally, the dominating force. ified number of mono-dispersed particles at the inlet of the cyclone
According to [32], the drag coefficient, CD is given as: and by monitoring the number escaping through the underflow.
The more particles are tracked, the more accurate efficiencies are
24
CD ¼ for Rep < 1 ð11Þ attained. Collisions between particles and the walls of the cyclone
Rep were assumed to be perfectly elastic (coefficient of restitution is

 equal to 1) [15]. Also, particle–particle collision is negligible.
24 1 2 The choice of the time step influences the convergence behav-
CD ¼ 1 þ Re3p for 1 < Rep < 400 ð12Þ
Rep 6 ior: if taken too large the simulations diverge, if taken too small
where Rep is the particle Reynolds number defined as: the computation times go up. For steady-state problems, the time
steps are false time steps. False time steps used for simulation of

Fig. 9. Pressure, axial velocity and turbulent contours at the top plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets (Qi = 0.08 m3/s).
618 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622

flow field are brought in Table 1. Time step of 0.2 ms is used for cal-
culation of particle trajectories in the numerical model.
2.3. Numerical methods
In the numerical simulations the finite volume methods have
been used to discrete the partial differential equations of the model
using the SIMPLE method for pressure–velocity coupling and the
second-order upwind scheme to interpolate the variables on the
surface of the control volume. The RSTM is used in the simulation,
and the computation is continued until the solution converged
with a total relative error of less than 0.00001. A velocity inlet
boundary condition is used at the cyclone inlet, meaning that a
velocity normal to the inlet is specified. A pressure outlet boundary
condition is used at the outlet. Some geometrical parameters and
operating conditions in simulations are shown in Table 2.
To make sure that the obtained results are independent of the
size and the number of generated grids, several grids with different

Fig. 10. Pressure contour at the middle plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets, A, B and C represents flow rates: 0.02, 0.04 and 0.08 m3/s respectively.
 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622
sizes has been tested for each cyclone; and it has been attempted
to consider for each cyclone the best grid, with the highest accu-
racy and the lowest computation cost. A number of 9,00,000–
12,00,000 hexahedral cells are generated for analyzing the flow
field in the cyclones. Fig. 3 shows a sample of grid gene d  ration
for cyclones with two inlets.
The collection efficiency is the important objective function in
cyclone designs. In this paper the investigated particle diameters
are between 0.1 lm and 134 lm. The cumulative particle size dis-
tribution (PSD) is shown in Fig. 4. For applying this PSD in numer-
ical simulation the Rosin-Rammler method is used. The Rosin-
Rammler distribution function is based on the assumption that
an exponential relationship exists between the particle diameter,
d, and the fraction of particles with diameter greater than d, Yd:
 n
Y d ¼ eðd=dÞ ð14Þ
where d is the mean diameter in PSD and can be calculated as the
diameter at which Y d ¼ e1  0:368. Similarly n is the spread diam-
eter and can be calculated as the follows:
lnð ln Y d Þ
n¼  ð15Þ
lnðd=dÞ
Fig. 11. Pressure contour at the top plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets, A, B and C represents flow rates: 0.02, 0.04 and 0.08 m3/s respectively.
619
 and n are calculated as 44.4 lm and 1.68,
In this paper, d
respectively.
2.4. Validation
To attain confidence about the simulations, it is necessary to
compare the simulation results with the available data. The com-
parison between experimental, analytical Wang model [34] and
the present numerical results for pressure drop as a function of
inlet velocity is shown in Fig. 5 for conventional cyclones. As is evi-
dent from this figure the present simulations agree well with the
available experimental and analytical data however it seems that
differences of numerical prediction and experimental data are dis-
tinguished with increasing the flow rate. This numerical error
could be contributed to the increase of flow complexity in high
inlet velocities. For validating the collection efficiency results
Table 3 compares the present numerical results and the related
experimental data of Wang [34] for different PSDs in conventional
cyclones. In Table 3, D50 is the diameter of a particle which has 50%
probability of separation and 50% probability of escaping and is a
criterion for comparing efficiency of cyclones. Physical characteris-
tics of A–E particles are shown in the Table 3. MMD and GSD are
Mass Median Diameter and Geometric Standard Deviation, respec-
620 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622

tively. As shown in this table a good agreement is observed
between numerical predictions and experimental results.
3. Results and discussion
Pressure drop between inlet and outlet is one of the important
objective functions in cyclones. Many empirical models have been
proposed for the pressure drop in the cyclones [28]. In Wang’s
model [34] the total pressure loss in the cyclone is obtained by
summing up the five pressure drop components as follows:

This study is intended to obtain the effects of number of inlets DPtotal ¼ DP e þ DPk þ DPf þ DP r þ DPe DP o ð16Þ
on the performance of new cyclones [23] by CFD simulations
within those cyclones with one, two and three inlets in different where, the components of Eq. (14) are explained in Table 4. The
flow rates. effects of number of inlets on the pressure drop of the new design

Fig. 12. Axial velocity contour at the middle plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets, A, B and C represents flow rates: 0.02, 0.04 and 0.08 m3/s respectively.
 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622 621

Fig. 13. Axial velocity at the top plane in the new cyclones with one, two and three inlets, A, B and C represents flow rates: 0.02, 0.04 and 0.08 m3/s respectively.

cyclones are shown in Fig. 6a. As shown in this figure, in all of the
flow rates, the cyclone with three inlets has the lowest pressure
drop and the cyclone with one inlet has the highest pressure drop.
The pressure contours for new cyclones with different number of
inlets in three different flow rates at top and middle planes are
shown in Figs. 7–11. In all of the presented contours, A, B and C rep-
resent flow rates: 0.02, 0.04 and 0.08 m3/s respectively and digits 1,
2 and 3 represent the number of cyclone inlets. As shown for all
cases the low pressure zone is seen in the center of the cyclones
and it is similar to the conventional ones.
The collection efficiency in the new design cyclone separators
with one, two and three number of inlets is calculated and the
effects of number of inlets on the collection efficiency of the new
design cyclones are shown in Fig. 6b. As shown in this figure, in
all of the flow rates, the cyclone with three inlets has the highest
collection efficiency and the cyclone with one inlet has the lowest
efficiency.
The velocity field in a cyclone has three components: tangential,
axial and radial. The radial component is the smallest one and can
be neglected for basic calculations [35]. The axial velocity is impor-
tant for the collection efficiency in the cyclones. The axial velocity
in the new design cyclone separators with one, two and three num- Fig. 14. Particle trajectory in cyclones.
622 H. Safikhani et al. / Advanced Powder Technology 29 (2018) 611–622
ber of inlets is calculated and the effects of number of inlets on the
axial velocity of the new design cyclones are shown in Fig. 6c. As
shown in this figure, in all of the flow rates, the cyclone with three
inlets has the highest axial velocity and the cyclone with one inlet
has the less efficiency. The mentioned note is totally compatible
with the collection efficiency results. For better understanding
the velocity distributions, the axial velocity contours for new
cyclones with different number of inlets in three different flow
rates at top and middle planes are shown in Figs. 7–13. The axial
velocity is important for the particle collection in the cyclones.
As shown in those figures, the maximum value of axial velocity
in each case is at the center of cyclone which is leading to high suc-
tion and increasing the collection efficiency.
The turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) in the new design cyclone
separators with one, two and three number of inlets is calculated
and the effects of number of inlets on the TKE of the new design
cyclones are shown in Fig. 6d. As shown in this figure, in all of
the flow rates, the cyclone with three inlets has the less TKE which
may lead to less noise in cyclones and its pipelines. Similarly the
cyclone with one inlet has the most one. For better understanding
the TKE distributions, the TKE contours for new cyclones with dif-
ferent number of inlets in three different flow rates at top and mid-
dle planes are shown in Figs. 7–9. Viewing particle trajectory in the
new design cyclones would be useful. The particle trajectory for
new cyclones with one, two and three inlet is shown in Fig. 14.
As shown in all of them a vortex is generated which highly affects
the separation process in cyclones and the particle trajectories are
compatible with the other results such as axial velocity contours.
4. Conclusion
In this paper numerical study of the fluid flow was presented by
numerical techniques to characterize the performance of new
design cyclone separators with one, two and three tangential
inlets. The Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes equations with Rey-
nolds stress turbulence model (RSM) were solved by use of the
finite volume method based on the SIMPLE pressure correction
algorithm in the computational domain. The Eulerian-Lagrangian
computational procedure was used to predict particles tracking
in the cyclones. The velocity fluctuations were simulated using
the Discrete Random Walk (DRW). In the results the effects of
number of inlets on the different important parameters such as
pressure drop, collection efficiency, axial velocity and turbulence
were investigated and deeply discussed. Contours of velocity, pres-
sure and turbulent kinetic energy within these cyclones with dif-
ferent number of inlets were shown. Based on the presented
results, the following conclusions may be drawn:
1. The cyclone with three inlets has more collection efficiency
with respect to cyclones with one and two inlets.
2. The cyclone with three inlets has the less pressure drop with
respect to cyclones with one and two inlets.
3. The cyclone with three inlets has the less turbulent kinetic
energy distribution with respect to cyclones with one and two
inlets which may lead to less noise in cyclones and its pipelines.
4. Generally it is recommended to use the new cyclone designs
with higher number of inlets.
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