Caracterização de Hidrociclones Cilíndrico-Filtrantes Otimizados

Abstract

Hydrocyclones are devices used in solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separation processes, having a small size and low acquisition and maintenance cost. Several studies have been developed to increase the performance of these equipment, guaranteeing a more efficient process with lower energy costs. In this context, researchers from FEQUI / UFU developed filtering hydrocyclones. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the performance of cylindrical-filtering hydrocyclones optimized by Salvador (2017) towards conventional hydrocyclones with the same geometric and operational parameters. Thereunto, the volumetric concentration of solids in the feed, the underflow diameter and the pressure drop in the equipment were varied in three levels. For the case of maximum total efficiency, the highest efficiency was obtained for the filtering equipment with 5 mm of underflow diameter, operating at 1.77 bar and with a quartzite suspension with volumetric concentration of 1%, being 88.55%. The increase of feed’s solids concentration impaired the separation efficiency. In the second case of optimization (minimum underflow-to-throughput ratio), the lowest values found were obtained for the hydrocyclones in the most diluted condition, reaching 0.57% for a conventional modality and 0.65% for a filtering one. To maintain lower net ratios and higher efficiency values, it was necessary to work with a more diluted suspension. In the third optimization case, whose objective was to minimize Euler number, the filtering equipment with 5 mm of underflow diameter, in a volumetric feed concentration of 5.5% showed a smaller Euler number, being 578. The increment in the percentage of solids caused a decrease on the energy cost for these devices. Finally, the project equations and efficiency curves for the cylindrical-filtering hydrocyclones were raised with satisfactory adjusts.