Incorporação de um cilindro filtrante na separação sólido-líquido em hidrociclones

Abstract

Hydrocyclones are equipments that separate a discrete phase (solid, liquid, gas) from a continuous phase (liquid) in a centrifugal field. Several proposals of modified hydrocyclones have always been presented by literature. In this context, the particulate system research group from Chemical Engineering College of Federal University of Uberlandia carried on several studies with hydrocyclones whose conical sections have been replaced by filtering conical section, which resulted in the conical-filtering hydrocyclone (CoFH). Hence, the main purpose of this dissertation was to continue in this branch of research now proposing the replacement of the cilindrical section by a filtering cilindrical one, which resulted in cilindrical-filtering hydrocyclone (CyFH) and thus comparing both non conventional equipments with the conventional hydrocyclone (CH). All of these hydrocyclones were manufactured according to the optmized geometry proposed by Vieira (2006). Furthermore, another purpose of this research was to assess how the permeability of the porous media influenced the performance of cilindrical filtering hydrocyclone. The results showed that associating filtration with hydrocyclone processing was beneficial, considering that for both filtering hydrocyclones the Euler number diminished, in average, 17% for the CoFH and 22% for the CyFH compared with the conventional equipment. For suspensions containing fine particles, the CoFH could be considered the best option, because it presents the highest separation efficiency among all hydroyclones tested. Nevertheless, if suspensions containing coarse particles were processed, the CyFH would be the most indicated for the process, for presenting high separation efficiency and also be able to process more suspension per unit time. Regarding the influence of permeability, the main results indicate that it is not an advantadge to employ highly permeable porous media, because in terms of separation they would be identical or even worse than the conventional hydrocyclone. However, considering suspensions containing coarse particles, the cylindrical-filtering hydrociclones with intermediate or lower permeabilities could be employed, due to the fact that they would reach high separation efficiencies combined with high processing capacity. Summarizing, it could be concluded that the settlement of the filtering medium influenced the performance of cylindrical-filtering hydrocyclones, as well as the permeability showed to influence the performance of this hydrocyclone.