Experimental and Computational Study of Classification of Particles by Improved Centrifugal Separator

Abstract

This study investigated the particle classification performance of an improved centrifugal separator. The improvements made in the centrifugal separator were the installation of another outlet near the wall of the conventional centrifugal separator and a ring partition in the outlet tube. As a result, it was found that 95% cut size of the centrifugal separator was lowered by reducing the ratio of fine particle's flow rate to the total flow rate because large fraction of coarse particles were collected into the outlet tube near the wall. The ring partition improved the particle classification performance because it prevented the mixing between fine and coarse particles. These experimental results were qualitatively in agreement with the predictions by the computational simulation.