Improving Performances of Gas Cyclones for Hot Gas Cleaning

Guogang Sun *, Yuming Zhang, Jianfei Song

State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, P. R. China;

Beijing Key Laboratory of Process Fluid Filtration and Separation, Beijing, 102249, P.R. China

The design of a gas cyclone operating at high temperature and high pressures is still a challenging task. This design is of interest in CFB coal generation, coal gasification, solid fossil fuel pyrolysis, waste incineration and cement industry, but also for petrochemical industries (e.g. FCCU). The development of new/advanced processes and more rigorous environmental protection requirements lead to a continuous interest in improving the performances of gas-solid cyclone separators. This presentation discusses major issues with respect to improving cyclone performances: 1) The prediction of the separation efficiency and pressure drop. There exist various models or procedures for the calculation of cyclones. For practical cyclone design a rough calculation of the separation efficiency and pressure drop is often sufficient. 2) The precise design and optimum design. Accurate operating Data information of the gas and particles is essential for the cyclone design. The maximum efficiency inlet gas velocity and maximum efficiency height should be determined beforehand, which are two constraints for the optimal design of cyclone separators. Some research has been devoted to developing the calculation method to aforesaid two maximum efficiency parameters. The optimized cyclone shows obvious improvement in performances. 3) Structure improvement and innovation. A series of structural measures have been developed to suppress short-circuit flow and re-entrainment of particles in cyclone separators. The performance of the new cyclone has been significant improved.

Key words: Cyclone separator, Hot gas cleaning, Design, Efficiency, Pressure drop