Advances and Applications in Mechanical Engineering and TechnologyAuthor's: Oboetswe S. Motsamai
Pages: [31] - [57]
Received Date: August 26, 2010
Submitted by:
Effectiveness and efficiency of hydro-cyclone separators are highly dependent on their geometrical parameters and flow characteristics. Performance of the hydro-cyclone can therefore, be improved by modifying the geometrical parameters or flow characteristics. The mining and chemical industries are faced with problems of separating ore rich stones from the non-ore rich stones. Due to this problem, a certain amount of precious metals is lost to the dumping sites. Plant managers try to solve these problems by stock piling what could be useless stones, so that they can be re-processed in the future. Re-processing is not a sustainable approach, because the re-processed material would give lower yield as compared to the production costs. Particulate separation in a hydro-cyclone has been investigated in this work, by using computational fluid dynamics. The study investigated the influence of various flow and geometric parameters on particulate separation. Optimal parameters for efficient separation have been determined for the density of fluid, diameter of the spigot, and diameter of the vortex finder. The principal contribution of this paper is that, key parameters for design optimization of the hydro-cyclone have been investigated.
hydro-cyclone, performance, near optimal, spigot, vortex finder, trajectories.
