CFD Simulation Studies on a 19 Cone Angle Hydrocyclone

Abstract

Hydrocyclone being in practice for classification applicat-ions are of low cone angle typically at 10°. The details on the simulation of such hydrocyclone are well reported. The present study is an attempt to simulate the water flow behaviour inside a 3 inch 19° cone angle hydrocyclone, which in general is applied for processing intermediate size coal and is popularly know as heavy medium cyclone. A 3D axi-symmetric model of standard 3" heavy medium cyclone geometry is generated. The computational domain is divided into unstructured grid having 115053 tetrahe-dral volumes using GAMBIT preprocessor. A segregated solver with steady state 3-D double precision scheme was used for model computations assigning a convergence value of 1e-06. For predicting swirling flow characteristics prevailing inside the cyclone, Pressure Interpolation Scheme (PRESTO) is used. Reynolds stress model (RSM), which was reported to account with greater precision for the effects of swirl, rotation etc. was selected for turbulence calculat-ions. For obtaining the pressure field inside the system SIMPLE algorithm scheme was used. Higher-order Quadratic Upwind Interpolation (QUICK) spatial discretisation scheme was used for field variables interpolation from cell centers to faces of the control volumes. Tangential, axial velocity profiles and pressure distributions are pres-ented and the water-split values obtained through simula-tion are compared with the experimental results.