Experimental study on the gas-solid two-phase flow in a square cyclone separator with downward gas exit by particle dynamic analyzer

Three dimensional particle dynamic analyzer was employed to measure the gas-solid two-phase flow in a lab-scale square cyclone separator with downward gas exit under four cases of different inlet velocity and particle concentration. The center of flow field deviates from the geometric center of cyclone. The flow field shows a feature of Rankine eddy having strong swirling region in the central part and pseudo-free eddy region of weak swirling intensity near the cyclone wall. Local vortex exists at the corner where the flow changes its direction sharply. When the cyclone wall is heated and the suspension temperature is elevated, the flow field becomes more uniform than that under room temperature condition. The local vortex is weakened and the swirling intensity becomes poorer so that the total mean separation efficiency is decreased from about 81% to 76.5%.