Design of a stationary guide vane swirl air cleaner

This work offers guidelines for the efficient design of a particular type of swirler separator in which the swirling motion is produced by stationary guide vanes. The main variables that affect the operation of this separator device (i.e., swirler diameter, blade geometry, front and back cones, separation distance, collection gap size, and airflow velocity) are studied either through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations or experiments and their influence on pressure drop and collection efficiency determined. Pressure drops are very much affected by the reduction in area for the airflow. Therefore, any changes in design variables that cause flow acceleration will contribute to an increase in pressure drop. Collection efficiency, on the other hand, is mainly a function of the collection gap width.