Numerical prediction of pressure drop and particle separation efficiency of some vane-type dust filters

The modeling of particle separation efficiency is a topic of interest in the fields of environmental science and chemical engineering. Numerical simulations are carried out in this work, for the efficiency analysis of some dust filter prototypes inserted in railway vehicles. This analysis is based on the determination of the pressure drop coefficient and separation efficiency for some existing separation filter profiles. The system is taken as a particulate-fluid two-phase flow, in which the continuous incompressible fluid phase constitutes one component and the discrete particle phase. The fluid phase consists of an incompressible isothermal viscous fluid with low density, whereas the disperse phase consists of solid dust particles. A Reynolds stress turbulence model is chosen for modeling the continuous phase flow. By considering particles of small sizes their trajectories are strongly influenced by the fluid flow and by the collision of the particles among one another and with the filter walls. For modeling particles' movement the Basset-Boussinesq-Oseen equation, combined with the Tsuji spring model, is chosen. The numerical method is implemented in the Open-Source CFD tool OpenFOAM. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.