Comparative study of the continuous phase flow in a cyclone separator using different turbulence models

Numerical calculations were carried out at the apex cone and various axial positions of a gas cyclone separator for industrial applications. Two different NS-solvers (a commercial one (CFX 4.4 ANSYS GmbH, Munich, Germany, CFX Solver Documentation, 1998), and a research code (Post-doctoral Thesis, Technical University of Chemnitz, Germany, September, 2002)) based on a pressure correction algorithm of the SIMPLE method have been applied to predict the flow behaviour. The flow was assumed as unsteady, incompressible and isothermal. A κ-e turbulence model has been applied first using the commercial code to investigate the gas flow. Due to the nature of cyclone flows, which exhibit highly curved streamlines and anisotropic turbulence, advanced turbulence models such as Reynolds stress model (RSM) and large eddy simulation (LES) have been used as well. The RSM simulation was performed using the commercial package activating the Launder et al.'s approach, while for the LES calculations the research code has been applied utilizing the Smagorinsky model. It was found that the κ-e model cannot predict flow phenomena inside the cyclone properly due to the strong curvature of the streamlines. The RSM results are comparable with LES results in the area of the apex cone plane. However, the application of the LES reveals qualitative agreement with the experimental data, but requires higher computer capacity and longer running times than RSM. This paper is organized into five sections. The first section consists of an introduction and a summary of previous work. Section 2 deals with turbulence modelling including the governing equations and the three turbulence models used. In Section 3, computational parameters are discussed such as computational grids, boundary conditions and the solution algorithm with respect to the use of MISTRAL/PartFlow-3D. In Section 4, prediction profiles of the gas flow at axial and apex cone positions are presented and discussed. Section 5 summarizes and concludes the paper.