Experimental study on the separation performance of a novel gas-liquid separator

A novel two-stage dynamic separator called high-gravity cyclone separator (HGCS) has been designed for gas-liquid separation. It is mainly composed of a cyclone chamber and rotary drum. In this study, its per-formance, including the separation efficiency and pressure drop, is experimentally investigated, and the effects of the operating conditions and drum parameters are evaluated. For droplets with a mean diam-eter of 7lm, the results indicate that the optimal gas inlet velocity and high-gravity factor are 12 m/s and 59.4, respectively, and the separation efficiency reaches 98 %. The effect of liquid concentration is sensi-tive to the high-gravity factor. At a liquid concentration of 57 g/m3, the maximum efficiency will be 98.75 % when increasing the high-gravity factor to 85.6. Furthermore, a smaller radial height is preferable when the gas inlet velocity is greater than 12 m/s, and a better separation efficiency can be obtained by increasing the drum length to 190 mm. However, when the length is 235 mm, the efficiency will be poor because of the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. Compared with the predominant roles of gas inlet velocity, drum length and radial height in pressure drop, the effects of liquid concentra-tion and high-gravity factor are small.(c) 2022 Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Society of Powder Technology Japan.