1997 Volume 34 Issue 9 Pages 684-689
Experimental and theoretical studies have been conducted on the separation of fine powders by the use of a revised louver type separator. The louver separator has movable plates, and the cut size can be controlled ranging from 10 to 20μm by changing the angle of the louver plates and the inlet velocity.
The 50% cut size decreases with the number of louver plates because the probability of collision with the louver plate decreases as the number of louver plates decreases. A new type of louver plates based on Joukowski's theory indicates superior classification sharpness compared with the flat-type plate.
The finite-element method employing a variational technique was used to solve the Navier-Stokes equations in a two-dimensional channel. The calculated partial separation efficiency agreed with the experimental results. The effect of increasing the scale of the louver separator was also calculated by use of numerical simulation, and it was found that the 50% cut size increases with the scale-up factor.
