Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192

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Waste Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Effect of cone angles of a hydrocyclone for the separation of waste plastics

with low value of density difference
Shuangcheng Fu, Yuchen Qian, Huixin Yuan *, Yong Fang
Institute of Separation Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province 213164, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The cone angle of a hydrocyclone is believed to be an important parameter to affect the separation performance.
Density separation For the recycling of waste plastics, this paper focused on the study of the influence of cone angles on the sep­
Hydrocyclone aration of light dispersed plastics (PET) and heavy dispersed plastics (PVC) by experiments and numerical
Cone angle
simulations. The cone angle was changed from 3◦ to 28◦ either at given length of the cylindrical section or at
Recycling of waste plastics
fixed total length of the hydrocyclone. The separation performance varied with cone angles at given length of the
cylindrical section more greatly than that at fixed total length of the hydrocyclone. Results show that particles
with different sizes in mixture exhibited discrepant separation behaviors at various cone angles. There was an
optimum cone angle at which the Newton efficiency peaked as 90.2%, while the purity of PET could also reach
the highest. The proportion of cylindrical section could be properly small for the enhancement of Newton
efficiency.

1. Introduction application. Flotation realizes the separation by adding agent to selec­

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is a thermoplastic resin with good
mechanical properties and electrical insulation. Polyvinyl chloride
(PVC) has excellent acid and alkali resistance and wear resistance, which
is used to manufacture pipes, profiles and various mechanical and
electrical parts (Moroni et al., 2015). Containers with the combination
of PET and PVC are common products in food, agriculture and beverage
industry. They suffer from a short life of service and soon become the
waste (AlSalem et al., 2009). Unfortunately, these plastic wastes are
much more difficult to handle than traditional wood and metal products
that the majority end up in landfills or incinerators. Incineration will
produce toxic gases, such as dioxin, while the landfill has negative effect
that the decomposition by microorganisms takes a long time and could
be transmitted through biological chain to threaten the human health.
The recycling of PET/PVC plastics not only reduces environmental
pollution, but also creates considerable economic benefits. Physical and
mechanical method is one of the most widely utilized processes for
recycling PET/PVC waste plastics, which includes crushing, cleaning,
separation, plasticization, granulation and forming (Fu et al., 2017).
Among them, separation was an important step to ensure the quality and
performance of recycled plastics (Marques and Tenório, 2000).
Some separation methods have been proposed and got industrial
tively wet the plastic components, but the recovery of surfactant is
difficult, and the separation efficiency of micron fine particles is poor
(Wang et al., 2019). Electrostatic separation uses the different charging
characteristics of different plastics in electrostatic field to achieve the
separation but requires large energy consumption. Compared to other
methods for recycling the waste plastics (Moroni et al., 2017; Carvalho
et al., 2010; Atkinson et al., 2013), hydrocyclone has the advantage of
structural simplicity, low operation cost and no secondary pollution. By
exerting the centrifugal force on the solid phases, hydrocyclone has the
ability to separate two plastics based on the slight difference of densities
between them.
Hydrocyclone is an efficient mechanical separator based on the
principle of centrifugal sedimentation. It is widely used in petroleum,
chemical, food and many other industries (Alves et al., 2020; Li et al.,
2021; Bicalho et al., 2012). The conventional hydrocyclone is mainly
composed of cylindrical and conical section. The cylindrical section
plays the role of pre-separation, which is conducive to stabilize the flow
field (Wang and Yu, 2006). The conical section contracts the flow
channel to strengthen the swirl flow, which is the main region of sepa­
ration (Supachart et al., 2018; Xiang et al., 2001). The cone angle that
represents the relative size of two regions has great impact on the flow
field and the movement of dispersed phases in the hydrocyclone.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yhx@cczu.edu.cn (H. Yuan).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2021.11.028
Received 12 August 2021; Received in revised form 13 November 2021; Accepted 18 November 2021
Available online 26 November 2021
0956-053X/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Fu et al. Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192

Literature concerned the effect of cone angles for the de-oiling process of and 1.31 g/cm3 respectively. As shown in Fig. 1(a), plastic bottles were
hydrocyclone (Colman and Thew, 1980; Colman and Thew, 1983; broken by a plastic crusher to obtain plastic particle mixture and its
Young et al., 1994; Maysam et al., 2013), in which small cone angles of particle size distribution was measured with a Malvern Mastersizer 2000
1.5◦ -6◦ were often adopted. Hydrocyclone with cone angles over 10◦ is laser particle size analyzer. The mass ratio of PET to PVC was 3.28:1. The
used in the separation of mixed slurry with solid phases, and many CaCl2 solution was formulated as medium whose density was 1.28 g/
unconventional conical structures were investigated. Yang et al. (2010) cm3 to achieve optimal separation (Fu et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2015).
used a double-cone hydrocyclone for solid–liquid separation, and found The design parameters of the hydrocyclone used in experiment (Fig. 1
that the first cone had great impact on the flow field. The smaller the (b)) are drawn on the schematic diagram. Using the test rig described in
cone angle difference between the two conical sections, the better the the authors’ previous work (Fu et al., 2017), the suspension with 3%(v/
classification of hydrocyclone. Ghodrat et al. (2016) found that the v) of plastic solids was pumped into the hydrocyclone for separation.
sharpness of the cut of a hydrocyclone with a parabolic cone is higher PET particles enriched flow was discharged from the vortex finder as
than that with ordinary straight cone. In occasion of classification of overflow, while PVC particles enriched flow was discharged from the
slime in mineral processing industry, the density difference between spigot as underflow. The flow rates of inlet and overflow outlet were
phases is usually large, cone angle over 20◦ or an cylindrical hydro­ monitored by flow meters respectively, and the pressure gauges were
cyclone is appropriate, which can alleviate coarse particles misplaced to installed at the inlet and outlets to monitor the pressure drop. The split
the overflow to some extent and has large processing capacity (Hou ratio was controlled by regulating the opening of valves close to the
et al., 2021). outlets. After the device operated stably, beakers were utilized to collect
Although there are many reports on the cone angle of hydrocyclone, 100 ml samples from underflow and overflow respectively. The samples
they are only limited to a single dispersed phase, and seldom consider were washed and dried in the desiccator. Then the solids were weighed
the situation of separating light and heavy dispersed phases simulta­ to obtain the total mass of plastic particles. After that, the solids were put
neously. Compared to the classification based on the difference of par­ into cyclohexanone solution until the complete dissolution of PVC. The
ticle sizes, the separation of two solid phases takes advantage of the residual solids were filtered, washed, dried and weighed to get the mass
density differences with flow medium and the settlement directions of and purity of PET or PVC.
light and heavy solids are opposite. The separation of PET/PVC waste
plastics is a typical hydrocyclone separation process with two solid
phases. In recent decades, many researches have been conducted for the
separation of waste plastics by hydrocyclone (Pascoe and Hou, 1999;
Carlson et al., 1996; Gent et al., 2009). They used general hydrocyclones
to separate waste plastics, which have been successfully applied in the
industry of beneficiation and are considered to have good separation
performance. For example, Gent et al. (2011) used large coal density
media separator (LARCODEMS) to separate different kinds of colored
plastics, and the recovery rate was more than 95%. Pascoe (2006)
separated the broken refrigerator plastic particles through a 75 mm
Mozley hydrocyclone and a partial separation was achieved. The result
was depended on the particle size and aspect ratio. These studies focused
on the influence of the physical parameters on the separation perfor­
mance, and the structural parameters of the hydrocyclone were rarely
mentioned. Moreover, the dispersion systems of plastic particles studied
in previous studies were mostly in the millimeter scale range. The sep­
aration capacity of hydrocyclone was not fully developed in this scale
(Tian et al., 2018) and it seemed that the study on the effect of structural
parameters was of secondary importance. In fact, it is inevitable to
produce a large number of micron sized particles after the process of
crushing. Cone angle is directly related to the flow field and particle
residence time in hydrocyclone. The separation performance of these (a)
fine plastic particles is sensitive to the cone angle of the hydrocyclone for
their complicated dynamic characteristics of settlement. Appropriate
cone angle is conducive to improve separation precision of waste plastics
with various sizes and low density difference.
In this paper, the flow field characteristics and the influence on the
separation of PET and PVC at various cone angles were studied through
experiment and numerical simulation. To evaluate the influence of the
total length of the hydrocyclone caused by the change of cone angles, the
length of the cylindrical section of the hydrocyclone varied accordingly
to keep the total length of the hydrocyclone constant. Furthermore, the
optimal proportion of cylindrical section to conical section under
different total lengths of hydrocyclone was given and compared.

2. Experiment and methods

2.1. Materials and test rigs

(b)
Common waste plastic bottles for packing beverage were utilized as
materials. Body and neck of these plastics bottles were made of PVC and Fig. 1. (a) Plastic mixtures and size distribution (b) Schematic diagram and
PET respectively. The average density of PET and PVC were 1.22 g/cm3 photo of the hydrocyclone used in experiment.

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S. Fu et al. Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192

2.2. Evaluation of separation efficiency ( PVC )

Rf Cu
EN = PVC PVC
− 1 (3)
Recovery rate is defined as the mass ratio of particles discharging 1 − Ci Ci
from overflow (PET) or underflow (PVC) respectively to the feed:
where Rf is the underflow fraction of solid phases; CPVC
i and CPVC
u are the
PET
Ere
mPET
= oPET (1) volume concentration of PVC in feed and underflow solids.
mi
3. Simulation
mPVC
PVC
Ere = uPVC (2)
mi 3.1. Geometry model

Where mPET
i andmPET
o are mass of PET in feed and overflow. mPVC
i and Gambit software was used for 3D modeling and mesh generation,
mPVC
u are mass of PVC in feed and underflow. and Cooper method was used to generate structural mesh. As shown in
The volume concentration of PET or PVC in overflow or underflow Fig. 2, the cone angles were changed at given total length of the
solids represents the purity of products after separation. Newton effi­ hydrocyclone (θ = 10◦ -28◦ ) or the length of cylindrical section (θ = 3◦ -
ciency (EN) was also used to characterize the solid–solid separation 24◦ ). The diameter of the underflow port remained unchanged, which
performance as shown in Eq. (3) (Yuan et al., 2001). It not only considers meant that the length of conical section or cylindrical section was
the purification of PET or PVC particles, but also includes the influence different at various cone angles.
of flow split.

Fig. 2. Meshes and geometries of hydrocyclones with various cone angles.

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S. Fu et al. Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192

3.2. Computation method and boundary conditions

Reynolds stress model (RSM) was used to simulate turbulence, which

is particularly suitable for the flow field with strong swirl characteristics
in hydrocyclone. SIMPLEC was adopted as pressure velocity coupling

Pressure drop(MPa)
method, and the pressure interpolation format was PRESTO!. QUICK
was chosen as discrete format for other items. The inlet velocity was set
to 6.17 m/s. Overflow and underflow port were set as pressure outlet.
The split ratio of underflow was adapted to 0.3 by controlling the back
pressure of outlets and ‘no slip’ boundary condition was used for walls. Experiment
Discrete Phase Model (DPM) model was used to simulate the separation Simulation
of particles in hydrocyclone. Compared to two fluid model (TFM), DPM
model could track particles’ trajectories, and is suitable for dilute par­
ticle flow. The properties and size distribution of plastic particles in
simulation were the same as that in experiments. The size distribution
was divided into 12 bins and each bin was represented by one particle Feed flowrate (m3/h)
size with corresponding volume fraction. The particles were injected
from the inlet consistent with the fluid velocity after the simulation of (a)
single flow phase was converged. When particles left the overflow or
underflow, the particle information was recorded and trajectory
tracking was terminated. After the grid and time step independence
verification, the mesh number used was about 3.3 × 105 and the time

Separation efficiency(%)
step was 5 × 10-4s.

3.3. Reliability verification of numerical simulation

The simplification of physical model, setting of boundary conditions Experiment

Simulation
and so on made the simulation deviated from the experimental value. As
shown in Fig. 3(a), the overflow pressure drop obtained by simulation
was compared with the experiment result, so as to indirectly verified the
accuracy of flow field simulation. It can be seen that test values appeared
to be slightly higher than simulation values due to the pressure loss
through pipeline, valves and flow meters. The variation of Newton ef­ Feed flowrate (m3/h)
ficiency in simulation and experiment at various feed flow rates and split
ratios was almost consistent (Fig. 3(b-c)). When the underflow split ratio (b)
was 0.3, Newton efficiency reached the highest value both in simulation
and experiment. The difference would be explained that the interaction
between particles was not considered in the numerical simulation, and
the volume occupied by particles was also ignored. In addition, the
Newton efficiency (%)

shape of plastic particles used in the experiment was not exactly

spherical like that in simulation (Matvienko and Andropova, 2018).

4. Results and discussion

Experiment
4.1. Static pressure Simulation

For the convenience of analysis, the position 50 mm away from the

top roof of the hydrocyclone was selected as the reference. The position
is located at the cylindrical section of the hydrocyclone, where the
typical characteristics of the flow field of the hydrocyclone could be
shown. Fig. 4(a) shows the pressure distributions at various cone angles.
It can be seen that when the length of cylindrical section was fixed, the
pressure drop increased with the increase of cone angle. It indicated that
more energy was required to drive the flow and the stability of flow field
was reduced. In addition, the radial pressure gradient close to the center
became large when the cone angle increased. The closer to the axis
center, the greater the pressure gradient. Large pressure gradient was
adverse to the stabilization of air column in axis center and forced it to
oscillate. This could make settled light particles remixing.
When the total length of hydrocyclone was fixed, the pressure drop
and gradient both decreased due to less energy loss from geo­
metrical mutation. The pressure distribution seemed unchanged when
the cone angle changed from 20◦ to 28◦ , because the cylindrical section
was long enough that the flow field there was not sensitive to the change
of the cone angle.
Underflow split ratio
(c)
Fig. 3. Comparison of results between experiments and simulations.
4.2. Tangential velocity
Fig. 4(b) shows the distributions of tangential velocity at various
cone angles. The centrifugal force generated by tangential velocity was
the main driving force of separation. When the length of the cylindrical
section was fixed, the tangential velocity increased with increase in cone
angles. It was worth mentioned that the flow magnitude along the radial
direction tended to be uniform and lower than the inlet velocity when
the cone angle was small. Although this alleviated the settling velocity of

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S. Fu et al.
Fig. 4. Flow field along the radial direction at various cone angles: (a) Static pressure, (b)Tangential velocity.
particles, it could also weaken the shearing force to particle, and make
sure the stability of settling procedure.
The variation of tangential velocity was also in contrast when the
total length of hydrocyclone was fixed. This was correlated with the
pressure drop directly that large energy consumption resulted in more
conversion to velocity. When the cone angle exceeded 20◦ , the tangen­
tial motion decayed quickly after the fluid entered the swirl chamber. In
the meantime, the distribution of tangential velocity in upper part of
cylindrical section seemed unchanged when the cone angle was over
20◦ . This was because the distance to conical section was too far that the
effect caused by the geometry change of the conical section spreading to
the upper cylindrical section was limited.
4.3. Axial velocity
The distribution of axial velocity determines the relative proportion
of flow to two outlets. As shown in Fig. 5(a), the axial velocity contours
of hydrocyclone at plane X = 0 with various cone angles show that the
cone angle seemed to have no impact on the relative distribution of
external and internal swirl flow by both two ways of changing the cone
angle. However, it is obvious to see that the cone angle had great in­
fluence on the circulating flow in the hydrocyclone. When the cone
angle was small, numerous local circulating vortices appeared close to
the axis center (Liu, 2014). With the increase of cone angles, these
circulating vortices weakened gradually. When the cone angle was over
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Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192
24◦ , these additional vortices almost disappear, but the circulating flow
near the bottom of the conical section was intensified, especially when
the total length was fixed, which could aggravate the misplacement of
particles.
The vector graph in the upper part of hydrocyclone chamber is
shown in Fig. 5(c) by choosing the cone angle of 3◦ , 6◦ , 12◦ , 24◦ when
the length of cylindrical section was fixed. The direction of the axial
velocity close to the axis center changed dramatically when the cone
angle was 3◦ . Based on the vector decomposition of velocity, the radial
velocity in conical section increased with the increase of cone angle, but
appeared to be different in cylindrical section. When the cone angle was
very small, the fluid in the cylindrical section was inclined to turn up­
ward and discharged to the overflow port for shorter distance than to
underflow port, and the streamline bent inward to increase the radial
velocity. In addition, the short circuit flow became large when
increasing the cone angle, while it kept constant in the case of fixing the
total length. From the perspective of traditional solid–liquid separation,
it was not conducive to the separation of heavy solids to underflow.
However, in solid–solid separation, light particles migrate to the over­
flow. Therefore, it is necessary to find an equilibrium point to compre­
hensively consider the separation of light and heavy solids.
4.4. Turbulence intensity
Fig. 5(b) shows the distribution of turbulence intensity with various
S. Fu et al.
(a)
(c)
Fig. 5. Contours and vectors of flow field at various cone angles. (a) Axial velocity at X = 0, (b) Turbulence intensity at X = 0, (c) Vector distribution of velocity
at X = 0.
cone angles at plane X = 0. Appropriate turbulence intensity is
conducive to the dispersion of plastic particles in the swirling flow field,
but high turbulence intensity will lead to confusion of the flow field,
which is disadvantageous to the settlement and separation of particles.
As can be seen from the figure, when the cone angle was small, the
turbulence intensity was relatively low. In the case of fixing the length of
cylindrical section, the space of chamber became narrow with the in­
crease of cone angles. This leaded to an increase of friction between fluid
and wall. When the total length was fixed, the axial flow scale in the
cylindrical section became large with longer cylindrical section. The
flow motion lost its regularity with high Reynolds number. Therefore,
the high turbulence intensity region inside the chamber expanded with
the increase of cone angles for both two ways of changing the cone
angle. When the cone angle was over 24◦ , the high turbulence intensity
region almost filled the whole chamber, which was adverse to separate
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Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192
(b)
the light and heavy solid phases effectively. When the cone angle was
10◦ in the case of fixing the total length, the length of cylindrical section
was too short that it was disadvantageous to the flow stability. Turbu­
lence intensity in the lower part of conical section was severe due to the
intense friction. This could exacerbate the misplacement of heavy par­
ticles settled to the wall.
4.5. Recovery of light and heavy solids with different sizes in mixture
Different sizes of particles follow different settlement laws. As shown
in Fig. 6, particles with sizes of 6 μm, 50 μm, 200 μm representing the
separation performance of fine, medium and coarse particles respec­
tively were studied at different cone angles. When the length of cylin­
drical section was fixed, the recovery rate of 200 μm PET particles
decreased gradually, while that of 50 μm and 6 μm particles increased
S. Fu et al.
first and then decreased with the increase of the cone angle. When the
cone angle was small, the pressure gradient along the radial direction
was small, and the centripetal buoyancy for separation was weak
accordingly. The circular vortices close to the center of the axis
enhanced the possibility of small PET particles returning to the external
swirl. This was related to the residence time of particles in hydrocyclone
(Jing et al., 2021). In simulation, the average residence time of 6 μm and
50 μm PET particles was much higher than that of 200 μm PET particles
and decreased sharply with the increase of cone angle from 3◦ to 10◦
(Fig. 7(a)). Comparing the contours of axial velocity at different cone
angles, it could be inferred that 6 μm and 50 μm particles showed more
randomness of motion and were more easily looped in the local sec­
ondary vortices along the axial direction than 200 μm particles (Baker
et al., 2007). These factors resulted in the low recovery of small parti­
cles. With the increase of the cone angle, the increasing centripetal
buoyancy played a leading role and the recovery of 50 μm particles and
6 μm particles increased consequently. When the cone angle varied from
12◦ to 20◦ , the recovery of 6 μm and 50 μm PET particles almost
remained unchanged. The decrease of residence time and increase of
driving force reached the balance for 6 μm and 50 μm particles in this
range. However, for 200 μm large particles, although the average
Fig. 6. Recovery rate of light and heavy particles with various sizes. (a) Fixing the length of cylindrical section, (b) Fixing the total length.
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Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192
residence time of 200 μm PET particles almost keep constant and the
centripetal force increased with the increase of cone angle, the recovery
still peaked at 98.5% at the cone angle of 3◦ . It could be concluded that
the aggravation of turbulence intensity led to the misplacement of 200
μm PET particles to underflow. Moreover, the drop of the recovery of 6
μm and 50 μm PET particles could also be explained by this factor when
the cone angle changed from 20◦ to 24◦ .
For the heavy PVC particles, the recovery rate to underflow
decreased with the increase of cone angle in general. The recovery rate
of 6 μm particles peaked as 47.5% at the cone angle of 3◦ , and that of 50
μm particles maintained at the highest value of about 65% when the
cone angle changed from 3◦ to 12◦ . For 200 μm particles, the variation of
recovery rate to underflow appeared to be quite small due to large
inertia and centrifugal force. Different from PET particles, the settling
towards the wall force PVC particles to the boundary layer of flow, and
the influence of circulating flow around the axis center was relatively
small. When the particle size was 6 μm and 50 μm, the effect of particle
residence time was more significant than other factors, especially when
the cone angle was larger than 16◦ . At the same time, new secondary
vortices formed close to the underflow port, which was disadvantageous
to the recovery of heavy PVC particles. Therefore, the decline of the
S. Fu et al.
Fig. 7. Average residence time of particles at various cone angles. (a) Fixing the length of the cylindrical section, (b) Fixing the total length.
recovery of 6 μm and 50 μm particles was apparent with the increase of
cone angles. It is worth noting that when the cone angle was larger than
16◦ , the recovery of 6 μm particles almost kept constant and approached
to the split ratio for their follow-up characteristics with fluid.
When the total length of hydrocyclone was fixed, the effect of the
length of hydrocyclone to the particle residence time could be avoided.
Contrary to the way of fixing the length of cylindrical section, the resi­
dence time of both PET and PVC particles increased with increase in
cone angles (Fig. 7(b)). As shown in Fig. 6(b), the recovery of PET
particles appeared the falling tendency with the increase of cone angle.
The extending of the cylindrical section could reduce the magnitude of
centrifugal force and centripetal buoyancy along the axis direction
(Supachart et al., 2018), thus aggravated the misplacement of PET
particles to underflow. When the cone angle was 10◦ , the axis position of
the bottom of vortex finder was extremely close to that of the cylinder-
cone intersection. It could intensify the short circuit flow and recircu­
lating flow to overflow. Small particles were sensitive to it and be apt to
discharge to overflow without separation. Therefore, the recovery of 6
μm PET particles changed more rapidly than any other two sizes when
the cone angle increased from 10◦ to 12◦ .
For PVC heavy particles, the small area of pre-separation zone at the
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Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192
cone angle of 10◦ was disadvantageous to the recovery to underflow,
being similar to PET particles. When the cone angle was larger than 12◦ ,
the increase of cone angles was advantageous to the recovery of 6 μm
particles to underflow, but reduced the recovery of 50 μm PVC particles.
Due to the carrying of inward radial velocity, most of the 6 μm PVC
particles migrated to the axis center. The increase of cone angle enlarged
the circulating flow area close to the underflow port, and made part of 6
μm PVC particles within internal swirl return to external swirl and dis­
charged to underflow. For 50 μm PVC particles, the drop of recovery to
underflow was ascribed to the decrease of centrifugal force firstly.
Furthermore, by comparing the residence time to different ports, the
average residence time of PVC particles to overflow were obviously
higher than that to underflow when the cone angle was large, which was
consistent with the result in literature (Stegowski and Leclerc, 2002). It
could be explained that the turbulence and chaos of flow field prolonged
the residence time of PVC particles and raised the misplacement to
overflow with the increase of cone angles. For 200 μm PVC particles, the
effect of these adverse factors was negligible to the settlement of parti­
cles, which were almost completely separated at various cone angles.
S. Fu et al.
4.6. Newton efficiency and purity
As showed in Fig. 8(a), the variation of Newton efficiency showed the
same trend with different ranges by two ways of changing the cone
angle. When the length of cylindrical section was fixed, Newton effi­
ciency increased first and peaked as 90.8% at the cone angle of 12◦ . It
Fig. 8. Newton efficiency and purity at various cone angles. (a) Newton effi­
ciency at various cone angles, (b) Purity of PET and PVC at various cone angles,
(c) Optimal length of the cylindrical section at various total lengths.
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Waste Management 140 (2022) 183–192
dropped down to 45% rapidly when the cone angle was 24◦ . When the
cone angle was changed by the way of fixing the total length, the highest
Newton efficiency was also achieved at the cone angle of 12◦ and
decreased to 73% when the cone angle was 28◦ . Hydrocyclones with
overly large or small cone angle reduced the performance for the sepa­
ration of waste plastics significantly. The result was totally different
from the separation of single light dispersion (Young, et al., 1994).
Though tangential velocity increased with the increase of cone angles by
fixing the length of cylindrical section, the Newton efficiency decreased
faster than that by fixing the total length. It could be concluded that the
effect of particle residence time played a more important role to the
separation of waste plastics than other unfavorable factors, such as
turbulence and confined secondary flow. When the cone angle was 12◦ ,
the total length of hydrocyclone was suitable that provides appropriate
residence time for separation of particles. Further prolonging of resi­
dence time caused by variation of cone angles from 12◦ to 3◦ was
limited, which could bring about other negative effects.
Although the recycling of PET and PVC took place at the same time,
the proportion of PET was much higher than PVC in the bottle used in
this study. Considering the convenience of post recycling process and
environmental hazards, PVC removal from waste plastics is primary. The
variation tendency of purity was almost the same with Newton effi­
ciency (Fig. 8(b)). By comparing the purity of PET and PVC after sepa­
ration at various cone angles, the purity of PET was always higher than
that of PVC. When the cone angle was 12◦ , and the purification of PET in
overflow could reach the highest value of 96.6%, while that of PVC in
underflow was only 83.4%. Different from Newton efficiency, the purity
of PVC was the highest at the cone angle of 10◦ , because more PET
particles migrating to overflow enhanced the relative proportion of PVC
in underflow. Generally, the cone angle of 12◦ could realize both the
maximum of Newton efficiency and purity of PET.
By fixing the diameter and changing the total length of hydro­
cyclone, the optimal length of cylindrical section with the highest
Newton efficiency changed in a narrow range compared to the increase
of total length (Fig. 8(c)). The length of cylindrical section could be
relatively small compared to the conical section of hydrocyclone.
Therefore, the increase of the length of conical section was more effec­
tive than that of cylindrical section for the purpose of intensifying the
separation. When the total length was small, the proportion of cylin­
drical section to conical section increased, because the absolute length of
cylindrical section could not be too small for the stabilization of flow
field.
Although this study discussed the effect of cone angles with a wide
range of variables, there may be still some limitations. The ratio of
volume concentration of PET and PVC was fixed in this study, but the
separation performance of multi-component particulate system is
related to the ratio of different components, especially under the high
concentration of solids (Mandakini et al., 2019). DPM model used in this
study could compute the separation efficiency of different particles
easily but hard to present the distribution of parameters of multiphase
flow in the whole flow field. Some secondary factors were not consid­
ered, such as the particle–particle interaction and particle shape. Further
experiments and simulation are required. Advanced models including
these potential effects are favorable to understand the mechanism of
solid–solid separation in hydrocyclone under various cone angles.
5. Conclusions
(1) The cone angle had great influence on the flow field in hydro­
cyclones. The influence of cone angles on pressure drop, tangential ve­
locity and axial velocity were opposite by two ways of changing the cone
angle. When the cone angle was small, the intensity of circulating flow in
the hydrocyclone was large. The region with high turbulence intensity
expanded with the increase in cone angles, which was not conducive to
solid–solid separation.
(2) When the length of the cylindrical section was fixed, the overflow
S. Fu et al.
recovery of PET particles with different particle sizes increased firstly
and then decreased with further increase in cone angles. For PVC par­
ticles, the variations of the recovery rates of three particle sizes were
different. When the cone angle was greater than 12◦ , the underflow
recovery rates of 50 μm and 200 μm particles fell greatly, while that of 6
μm particles almost kept constant. When the total length of hydro­
cyclone was fixed, the increase of cone angles was always detrimental to
the recovery rates of various sizes of PET particles. In general, the re­
covery of small and median size particles were more sensitive to the
change of cone angles than large particles.
(3) Regardless of the ways to change the cone angle, Newton effi­
ciency ascended first and then dropped down. The simulation result
reached 90.2% at peak when the cone angle was 12◦ . Newton efficiency
fluctuated more violently with the change of cone angles by the way of
fixing the length of cylindrical section than that of fixing the total length.
Compared to other factors, the effect of particle residence time played
the leading role with the change of cone angles. The purity of PET could
reach the highest value at the cone angle of 12◦ , while that of PVC
peaked at 10◦ by fixing the total length. For the optimization of Newton
efficiency, the enhancement of proportion of conical section was more
effective than that of cylindrical section.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgment
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Founda­
tion of China [grant number 21676031].
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