Design of Cyclone Dust Separators: A Constrained Multiobjective Optimization Perspective

Cyclone dust separators (cyclones for short) are devices used to remove dispersed particles from a flue gas. They are widely applied because of their simple structure, low cost, ease of operation, and ability to operate in harsh environments. In contrast to previous work where the cyclone dust separator design was mainly regarded as an optimization problem with box constraints, we approach it as an optimization task involving the maximization of the collection efficiency and the minimization of the pressure drop, while regarding both box constraints and geometric constraints that limit the designs. We study three high-efficiency cyclone configurations, define four test instances for each configuration, and analyze the feasibility ratios resulting from the constraints. In addition, we investigate the performance of three multiobjective optimization algorithms on this design problem. We analyze the results, both in the objective and the decision space, investigate the effect of the decision space size on the solution quality, and gain insights into problem properties relevant to cyclone designers. Finally, we illustrate the results with selected optimized cyclone designs.