Effects of inlet flow rate and concentration fluctuations on the separation performance of a novel dynamic hydrocyclone

In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculation was used to evaluate the effects of the inlet feed flow rate and concentration fluctuations on the hydrocyclone's separation performance. A mixture model was used to model the multiphase flows, while the Reynolds stress model (RSM) modeled the turbulence in the inner field of the dynamic hydrocyclone. After a numerical investigation, it is found that when the flow rate at the inlet was below a certain value, favorable separation efficiency was obtained with some fluctuations that most likely resulted from the influence of the wall at the high rotary speed. When the flow rate at the inlet was too large, the separation efficiency would dramatically decrease. When the inlet concentration was below a certain range, it would have little influence over the separation efficiency; however, when it became too large, the separation efficiency would rapidly decline. The simulation results agreed with the theoretical results.