ABSTRACT

A cyclone is an equipment or a device used for the separation of dust particles from air, which has no moving component parts. This mechanism can also be defined as a system of winds circulating about a center of relatively low barometric pressure and on the earths surface, blowing inward in spiral form.

This project is constructed for the separation of liquid – liquid and solid – liquid mixture, like air and dust mixture, dust and liquid drop. This equipment is constructed to separate dust air mixture input of about 25m3/h.

The equipment was constructed with flat sheet metal plate of a desired standard. The dimensioned and for truncated parts were coupled and welded in other to fasten the parts together. The material used in this construction is mild sheet. This material was selected to avoid the effect of rust of material due to contact of the separating item or material with the walls of metal sheet.    

In considering the rating of this instrument, it is capable of separating a gas-dust mixture of about 70% pure compared to the one used in commercial industries. That has the offering of product at around 90% pure. The total material cost of this equipment is ten thousand naira (N10,000).

The effect of hydrocyclone had been of much help especially in the pharmaceutical and photographic industries in the process of particle size separation. It is use to separate a mixture of particle size within the range of 4 and 95 m. The moving or relative speed for this model during separation is 4mls.

INTRODUCTION

Since 1772 Ac, the ancient Greek’s and the Roman Empire has successfully been equipment for separation to carry out separation operation. In the past, there are different separation apparatus invented either for the purpose of size reduction or for size separation process such as decapitation and filtration. But later, a way of separating liquid from liquid by distillation process was introduced, but the mystery of separating dust, steam of gas and liquid remain not until recently, when it was broken by the invention of an apparatus called the electrostatic precipitator and the cyclone.

A cyclone, which is a mechanical separating equipment, is concerned with the separation of particulate and could be defined as a type of centrifugal equipment for separating dust or mist from gasses. The separation of a cyclone takes effect due to the strong centrifugal acceleration that act radially. The separation depends on periodically size and also on particles density, therefore, cyclone may be used to effect separation on the basis of particle size or density or even both.

If the apparatus is the hydrocyclone, the liquid used in this apparatus is usually water and the viscosity (m) is much higher than that of the gas. 

The uncounted fluid resistance is greater in hydrocyclone than in ordinary cyclone. In hydro-cyclone which are solid-liquid separator, the slurry is pumped in tan gentially near the top coarse or heavy solid are thrown out to the apex and the same or higher solid are removed from the center of the vortex at the top.

Generally, hydrocyclone have pared way needed, often for processes that makes use of pure (filtered) air as their raw material is needed. For instance, in electronic and pharmaceutical industries where dust particles are to be removed may range from 10 to more than 2,000mu, in size. Moreover, in an evaporator, it is frequently necessary to estimate droplets, which become entrained in the vapour and in a plant involving fluidized solids.

 The objective of this project is to construct a hydrocyclone that can be used in small scale industry for the size separation processes. The constructed hydrocyclone can also be used industrially for product quality improvement, as in an cleaning in pharmaceutical products and photographic film. A suitable choice of material of construction was made in order to enhance the versatility of its application’s.