Effect of Vortex Finder Length and Regression Model of Water Flow Ratio as Correlated with Cylindrical and Conical Lengths of a Hydrocyclone

Abstract

This research was divided in two parts. The first part was the study of the effect of the proportion of vortex finder length on the separation efficiency of a 40-mm hydrocyclone. The effects of vortex finder lengths of 24, 32 and 40 mm were investigated. The test suspension was a mixture of silica and water. The silica particles had an average size of 9 to 10 micrometer at a solids concentration of 0.5% w/v. The feed flow rate of 1 m3/h was used at a flow ratio of 0.1. It was found that the longer the vortex finder length, the higher separation efficiency. A vortex finder length of 40 mm, cylindrical length of 60 mm and cone length of 200 mm resulted in the best separation efficiency up to 84.06 percent. The second part of the
study involved the construction of a model to predict the water flow ratio from the cylindrical and conical lengths of a hydrocyclone. The data obtained from the experiments in the first part and the data of an earlier research, 75 data sets in total, were used to construct a relationship between the proportion of hydrocyclone and the water flow ratio. By using multiple linear regression method, it was found that the constants, k1 was 2.14 × 1014 and the regression coefficient, n2, n3, n4 and n5 were 0.983, 1.167, 2.248 and -2.993, respectively