Cyclone Dust Separator for Laboratory Study

Abstract

Small particles and dust generated from industrial processes or from natural processes, without any proper control or appropriate management, will widely expose and suspense in the air and cause pollution. This research work was conducted to evaluate the performance of an in-house designed and built cyclone dust separator used for test and study in the laboratory at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Burapha University. The cyclone’s dimensions follow the high-efficiency cyclone while the testing equations follow simple models. The particles (ground sand) were sieved into several sizes of less than 32, 32-44, 45-124, 125-249, 250-299, and 300-425 microns, respectively, and the constant compressed air flow rates of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 6.0, 8.0 and 10.0 m3/hr at 30 ± 1 oC were introduced into the cyclone. The test showed that the density of the particles ranges from 2.636 to 2.650 g/cm3 and the pressure drop across the cyclone were between 19.6 and 313.0 Pa. The cyclone collection efficiency test, under an appropriate condition (without any dust particle trap at the cyclone inlet), shows satisfactory agreement with the standard fractional efficiency curve constructed for the high-performance cyclones. Such conditions were the minimum compressed air flowrate of 4.0 m3/hr and the dust maximum particle size of 425.0 m while the pressure drop was not exceeded 0.00196 atmospheric pressure.