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Pressure drop and separation efficiency in a flooded hydrocyclone
Author(s) -
Witbeck Wayne O.,
Woods Donald R.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.5450620114
Subject(s) - hydrocyclone , pressure drop , arithmetic underflow , volumetric flow rate , factorial experiment , volume (thermodynamics) , drop (telecommunication) , mechanics , analytical chemistry (journal) , materials science , mathematics , chromatography , chemistry , thermodynamics , statistics , physics , mechanical engineering , computer science , programming language , engineering
Abstract The pressure drop and separation efficiency were measured of a hydrocyclone operating under flooded underflow or no air‐core conditions. The solids were glass spheres with a geometric number average diameter of 13 μm and a geometric standard deviation of 1.69. Water was the fluid. Other fixed variables included the solids feed concentration of 2265 mg/L, the glass hydrocarbon configuration following the optimal Rietema recommendations and the temperature. The variables were feed flowrate 0.44 to 0.63 L.s 1 and volume split of 2.4:1 to 6.1:1; a factorial design was used. The pressure drop, ΔP s , was 4 to 7 times larger than that expected for air core operation and was correlated in terms of the capacity ratio Q/(Δ P s ) 0.47 . The pressure drop was relatively independent of volume split. The separation efficiency was a much stronger function of volume split than of feed flowrate. The D p(50) diameter at a feed flowrate of 0.63 L.s −1 lies between 4.3 to 9.2 μm; of the seven correlations available for predicting D p(50) , the approach of Rietema (1961) gives the best results. The experimentally measured reduced efficiency was less sharp than that reported by Yoshioka and Hotta (1955) and by the theory of Uematu et al. (1962).