ABSTRACT
Cyclones operate by accelerating particle-laden gas in a vortex from which particles are removed by centrifugal force. One of the most widely used dust collecting devices, cyclones are inexpensive to construct and easy to maintain because they do not have any moving parts. Although cyclones are inefficient for collecting particles smaller than 5 µm in diameter, they operate with low to moderate pressure drops. In addition, cyclones are used to control emissions from cement and lime kilns, grain elevators, grain drying and milling operations, thermal coal dryers, and detergent manufacturing. Various cyclone designs have been proposed; however the reverse-flow cyclone is the type most commonly used for industrial gas cleaning. The fluid dynamics of a cyclone are complex, and modeling the detailed flow pattern involves solving the strongly coupled, nonlinear, partial differential equations of the conservation of mass and momentum.
