Industrial decanter centrifuges are used in a wide range of industries to separate mixtures of solids and liquids. One ofthe main elements of these devices is the feed accelerator, which accelerates the incoming mixture to the high rotationalspeed required for separation. A well-designed feed accelerator can increase product throughput, solids recovery, andliquid clarity, while a poorly designed accelerator can increase wear and reduce the overall efficiency of the machine. Thisarticle presents experimental and computational quantification of the performance of six feed accelerator designs thatare currently used in decanter centrifuges. The experimental method allowed for the measurement of accelerator andpool speed efficiencies, and high-speed photography of the flow in the annular space between the accelerator and therotating pool. The computational model allowed for prediction of the flow path in the annular space and the torqueimparted on the fluid by the accelerator. A parametric study was conducted using the aforementioned computationalmodel for drum and disk accelerators. It was found that several of the accelerator design parameters were critical to theoverall performance, reinforcing the need for an optimised design. It was found that increasing the surface area of theport faces of the drum accelerator and increasing the discharge angle and discharge radius for the disk acceleratorimproved the performance of the accelerators.
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