A Numerical Study of the Flow Characteristics and Separation Efficiency of a Hydrocyclone

In this study, mixture flow of sand and water within a hydrocyclone was investigated using the Eulerian-Eulerian model based on a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technique. Experiments were also performed to validate the numerical analyses results. In Eulerian-Eulerian analyses, both solid and liquid phases are regarded as continua. Accordingly, conservation equations, such as continuity and momentum equations, are applied to each phase of sand and water. In this study, the RNG k-ε model was used as a turbulence model. The results of the computational analysis were compared with those obtained experimentally. The CFD and experimental results were largely consistent with each other. The accuracy of the analysis model was compared with the experiment, and the effects of inlet volume fraction of solid and inlet velocity of the mixture on separation efficiency were examined. Separation efficiency decreased as inlet velocity increased. In addition, separation efficiency was high when solid concentration was low (3%), but there was no relationship between concentration and separation efficiency when the solid concentration was above 6%.