The Effects of Swirl Vanes and a Vortex Stabilizer on the Dynamic Flow Field in a Cyclonic Separator

The present work describes the isolated and combined effects of two internal components – swirl vanes and a vortex stabilizer – on the properties of the flow inside a particular type of gas–liquid cyclonic separator. These elements play an important role in the optimization of the catch efficiency of the gas and liquid phases but may otherwise result in a large increase in pressure drop. It is shown that the vanes and the vortex stabilizer have a considerable influence on the position of the center of rotation of the flow, which clearly does not coincide with the geometric center of the cyclone. Here, an experimental study investigates the velocity field and the resulting pressure drop inside the cyclone to account for the individual effects caused by the two internal components. Particle Image Velocimetry is used to characterize the mean velocity field and the precession of the vortex core (PVC). For the different geometrical configurations discussed in the present work, the influence of the swirl vanes was always beneficial to reduce the residence time and thus decrease the pressure drop across the cyclonic separator. The present work also introduces a method for the assessment of the PVC frequency of a confined swirling flow for low frequency 2D-PIV measurements.