Experimental study of the turbulent flow characteristics of gas-solid dual-phase flows in a square-shaped cyclone separator

A three-dimensional particle dynamics analyzer was employed to study the gas-solid dual flow field in a square-shaped cyclone separator along with a discussion of the distribution of the flow field, pulsation velocity, particle concentration, turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent flow intensity, etc. The flow in the square-shaped cyclone separator has the features of a Rankine vortex, i.e., a forced swirling vortex zone at the central portion and a quasi-free vortex zone near a lateral wall. The quasi-laminar flow movement at the corners due to particle/wall face mutual collision gives rise to an intense particle turbulent-flow pulsation. The turbulent flow kinetic energy and local turbulent-flow intensity attain a relatively great magnitude near the corners. This indicates that the dual-phase flow has consumed a comparatively large amount of gas flow energy near the corners. The latter are the chief zones, where the pressure loss of the separator takes place. These corners were also found to be beneficial to particle separation, mainly because the intense pulsation consumes the kinetic energy of the particle and gas flow vortex movement. The study results can provide basic data for the structural optimization and also experimental contrast information for performing further numerical simulation research.