Simulation of gas aerodynamics and particle trajectories in the interaction of two opposing swirling flows

Abstract

The paper presents an original geometry of a vortex chamber in which aerodynamics of a gas flow is simulated during the interaction of two opposing swirling flows in order to equalize the centrifugal forces in the central region of the apparatus as applied to the tasks of separating powders by fractional composition or intensifying heat and mass transfer in chemical reactors. Based on the results obtained, the distributions of the trajectories of motion of single particles are determined, based on the discrete-trajectory approach, and the reliability of the results obtained for the aerodynamics of swirling flow in the proposed geometry of the vortex chamber was shown. As a result of mathematical modeling of the dynamics of motion of a single heavy particle in a swirling flow, the influence of swirl on the quality of the particle classification process is shown; for example, an increase in swirl leads to a greater influence of the centrifugal force which picks up heavy particles and throws them to the peripheral sector. In addition, an increase in the centrifugal force leads to a displacement of the boundary particle size. However, since this work presents a laminar formulation of the problem, the difference will amount to tens of microns; when updating to the turbulent problem, the difference will already be calculated in units of microns.