The Research on the Performance of Oil-gas Cyclone Separators in Oil Injected Compressor Systems with Considering the Breakup of Oil Droplets

摘要

The high-speed swirling flow field in the cyclone oil-gas separator will cause the breakup of oil droplets, thus reducing the separation efficiency. In this paper, the performance of an oil-gas cyclone separator was investigated through both numerical simulations and experiments with considering the breakup of oil droplets in oil-gas cyclone separators. The gas flow field was simulated using the RSM turbulence model and the trajectory of the oil droplets was calculated by the Discrete Phase Model (DPM). The breakup of oil droplets was simulated by TAB model and the wall boundary of oil droplets was treated as Reflect boundary. Meanwhile, the separation efficiency was measured and the Malvern Particle Size Analyzer was applied to get the droplets diameter distribution at the inlet and exit of the oil-gas cyclone separators to verify the simulation model. The results showed that the separation efficiency was influenced significantly by the breakup of oil droplets, especially for the high inlet velocity. The simulation results based on the presented model were in good agreement with the experimental data.