A THEORETICAL APPROACH FOR PREDICTING NUMBER OF TURNS AND CYCLONE PRESSURE DROP

A new theoretical method for computing travel distance, number of turns, and cyclone pressure drop has been developed and is presented in this article. The flow pattern and cyclone dimensions determine the travel distance in a cyclone. The effective number of turns was calculated based on the travel distance. Cyclone pressure drop is composed of five pressure loss components. The frictional pressure loss is the primary pressure loss in a cyclone. This new theoretical analysis of cyclone pressure drop for 1D2D, 2D2D, and 1D3D cyclones was tested against measured data at different inlet velocities and gave excellent agreement. The results show that cyclone pressure drop varies with the inlet velocity, but not with cyclone diameter.