Contact: Praveen Kumar Nedumaran, Dzmitry Misiulia

Funding: Zentrales Innovationsprogramm Mittelstand (ZIM)

Project form: Kooperationsprojekt (ZF)

The separation of a dispersed phase from a continuous phase, for instance, dust from exhaust gases, is an important process in the field of mechanical process engineering. Gas cyclones are the most common separators used for exhaust dedusting in industrial plants. Being simple in their design without any moving parts, having low installation and maintenance costs, long-term stable operation and ability to work at high operating temperatures (>1000 °C), gas cyclones are widely used in high-temperature exhaust dedusting industries like biomass combustion plants.

Cyclone separators are characterized by their separation efficiency and pressure drop. The main challenge of gas cyclones lies in the separation of dust from the PM2.5 gases, which contain more than 50% of the particles with aerodynamic diameters below 10 µm. Because of the relatively low separation efficiency of fine particles in cyclones, gas cyclones are commonly used as pre-separator for the downstream exhaust cleaning systems. These additional downstream exhaust filtering systems increase the overall installation, operation and maintenance costs. Since the pressure drop across the cyclone separator is significantly high, the energy-efficient operation of the gas cyclones become another important challenge.

The scope of this project lies in the development of a pre-separation cyclone with low-pressure loss and the main cyclone operable for the PM2.5 exhaust gases with increased separation efficiency. For the optimization of the cyclone geometry the numerical approach with Commutation Fluid Dynamics will be used [1–3].

[1] Misiulia, D., Lidén, G., Antonyuk, S. (2021). Evolution of turbulent swirling flow in a small‑scale cyclone with increasing flow rate: A LES Study. Flow, Turbulence and Combustion 107, 575–608.
[2] Misiulia, D., Antonyuk, S., Andersson, A.G., Lundström, T.S. (2020). High-efficiency industrial cyclone separator: A CFD study. Powder Technology 364, 943–953.
[3] Misiulia, D., Antonyuk, S., Andersson, A.G., Lundström, T.S. (2018). Effects of deswirler position and its centre body shape as well as vortex finder extension downstream on cyclone performance. Powder Technology 272, 14–22.