Effect of Dust Discharge Diameter on Wall Erosion in Cyclone Separator

Numerical approach of computational fluid dynamic (CFD) is conducted to systematically study the effects of dust discharge diameters on wall erosion in cyclone separator by using Reynolds stress model, discrete phase model and erosion value computing model in FLUENT software platform. The results show that the wall erosion appears local erosion and its overall trend hardly changes with dust discharge diameter in cyclone separator. Wall erosion values of annular space remain the same with the decrease of dust discharge diameter, while those of separation space increase differently and the difference reaches maximum near the bottom of cone. It is found that the changing regularity of wall erosion is mainly caused by the variation of internal flow structure in cyclone separator. Furthermore, the severe erosion near the bottom of cone is chiefly influenced by gas-solid rotation velocity, granular concentration, vortex core and the forces acting on particles. This research could reveal the important role of reasonable structure design in wall erosion reduction and provide numerical experiment method and basis for preventing cyclone separator's wall erosion.