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ARS Home » Plains Area » Las Cruces, New Mexico » Cotton Ginning Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #190519
Title: PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A SERIES CYCLONE TEST

Author
item Whitelock, Derek
item Buser, Michael

Submitted to: ASABE Annual International Meeting
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/20/2005
Publication Date: 12/20/2005
Citation: Whitelock, D.P., Buser, M.D. 2005. Preliminary results of a series cyclone test. ASABE Annual International Meeting. Paper No. 054014.

Interpretive Summary: Particulate emissions regulations on agricultural operations and processing facilities are becoming more and more stringent. Cyclones are commonly used in the processing industry as primary dust emissions abatement devices. A study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of adding one, two, or three high efficiency cyclones in series with the primary cyclone on reducing emissions for dust-laden air streams. Overall dust collection efficiency ranged from 91% to 98%. A single cyclone was significantly less efficient than series cyclone configurations. Succeeding cyclones in the series configurations captured less and smaller particles, and succeeding cyclones emitted dust containing smaller particles. A secondary cyclone increased overall efficiency significantly with an insignificant rise in required power, while additional cyclones raised efficiency only slightly and required significantly more power to operate. The research will add to the scientific literature and provide information about additional dust abatement options for agricultural operations.

Technical Abstract: Cyclones are commonly used in the processing industry as primary particulate emissions abatement devices. A study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of one, two, three, or four 1D3D cyclones, in series, on airstreams heavily loaded (236 g/m3) with fine particulate (mass median diameter <10 µm). The overall efficiency of a single cyclone (91%) was significantly lower than that of the series cyclone configurations (98%). Also, a single cyclone was consistently less efficient (91%) and had a higher static pressure loss (1356 Pa[5.4 in. w.g.]) than the No. 1 cyclone in the series configurations (94% efficiency and 881 Pa [3.5 in. w.g.] static pressure loss). Particle size distributions showed that there was a significant shift toward smaller sized particles in dust captured by the cyclones (8.78 to 1.86 µm) as the number of series cyclones increased from one to four. A secondary cyclone increased overall efficiency significantly with an insignificant rise in static pressure loss, while additional cyclones raised efficiency only about 1% more and increased pressure losses by 150%.