Abstract
Despite being simple equipment with wide range of operation, low investment cost and maintenance, the cyclones present a complex turbulent flow, with recirculation zones, high-intensity turbulent, high vorticity conservation, among others. The mathematical models used to describe these phenomena have a very complex solution, leading to a high computational cost, and several studies in this framework have been done. One way to balance the computational cost of simulations with the accuracy in the flow description is the use of Euler-Euler models that has been applied in this work. Also, the numerical analysis of the flow was performed by using different particle diameters to represent distinct solid phases. The model was set to represent one, three and five solid phases (Cyclo EE1, Cyclo EE3 and Cyclo EE5, respectively) to compare the number of solid phases influence. Furthermore, it was analyzed the effect of the solid-solid interaction between the different solid phases on the cyclone performance, through the proposition of an interface force model similar to the fluid dynamic drag force. Numerical and experimental data were combined and the influence of the 4-way coupling (solid-solid interaction) on the response variables was noticed. By using the 4-way coupling, the numerical solution was more stable and the dynamic behavior of the overall efficiency of separation oscillating was damped. So, the numerical study shows that the solid phases’ representation by the particle size describes the multiphase flow with greater fidelity. The combination of physical and numerical studies to refine the computational code and the proposal suggested in this work proved to be very promising for the advancement of multiphase flow studies in cyclones.
