Abstract
: Hydrocyclones are devices used in numerous areas of the chemical, food, and mineral
industries to separate fine particles. A hydrocyclone with a diameter of d50 mm was modeled using
the commercial Simcenter STAR-CCM+13 computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation package.
The numerical methods confirmed the results of the different parameters, such as the properties of
the volume fraction, based on CFD simulations. Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) and the combined
technique of volume of fluid (VOF) and discrete element model (DEM) for water and air models
were selected to evaluate semi-implicit pressure-linked equations and combine the momentum with
continuity laws to obtain derivatives of the pressure. The targeted particle sizes were in a range of
8–100 microns for a dewatering application. The depth of the vortex finder was varied to 20 mm,
30 mm, and 35 mm to observe the effects of pressure drop and separation efficiency. The split water
ratio increased toward a 50% split of overflow and underflow rates as the length of the vortex finder
increased. It results in better particle separation when there is a high injection rate at the inlet.
The tangential and axial velocities increased as the vortex finder length increased. As the depth of
the vortex finder length increased, the time for particle re-entrainment into the underflow stream
increased, and the separation efficiency improved.