Numerical study of erosion in cyclone separators and design modification for erosion reduction

This work involves the study of erosion in cyclone separators. The main regions of erosion failure in a cyclone separator are the roof and the cone region of the cyclone separator. There is a recirculation region of particles near the roof of the cyclone separator called an ash ring which continuously erodes the walls of the cyclone separator. This leads to increased maintenance costs. In this study, Large Eddy Simulations (LES) are used to model the turbulent flow field, and Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) is used to track the motion of the particles to compute the erosion rate in cyclone separators. Particles of sizes 50 - 250 μm are studied. Monodispersed and Rosin-Rammler distributions are also studied. Different inlet velocities are also studied. Based on the observed results, we have proposed a new design modification to the cyclone separator to remove the ash ring formation and reduce the cyclone separators erosion in the roof region. The design modification removes the sharp corners in the roof and replaces them with fillets of varying radii. Due to the design modification, we are able to achieve a reduction of erosion up to 90% in the roof region of the cyclone separator.