Asymptotic Water Split Behavior of Hydrocyclones; A Unique Design Characterization Methodology

An attempt has been made in this work to experimentally investigate the water split behavior of hydrocyclones for extracting the relevant features that are characteristic of hydrocyclone design conditions only. The experimental findings demonstrated that at high feed flowrates, the water split of the hydrocyclone attains a consistent value, referred to here as the stable split value, because of a fully developed and steady vortical flow through the hydrocyclone. These stable split values were shown to be characteristic of the hydrocyclone design conditions. An empirical model developed in the study considering the key hydrocyclone design variables could predict the stable split values with a validation R-2 of 0.98 and 0.96 for the training and testing data, respectively. It is believed that such a design-dependent parametric representation of the water split behavior can be significantly useful for hydrocyclone design comparison and selection which has not been reported in the literature so far.