Cyclones use centrifugal force to separate particles from an air stream.
Air enters at the top through a tangential inlet, where it spins
as it travels downward. The
force caused by the spin holds particles against the cone wall and dust
continues to spiral downward until it falls into a drum or storage
chamber. Clean air at the
center of the cyclone passes through a tube, out of the top, and into
the fan.
Cyclones are particularly well suited to severe loadings, and are
frequently used as a prefilter to a baghouse or other type of high
efficiency filter. A
cyclone will hit efficiencies in the high 90’s on typical
wood-working,
grinding, sanding, or similar applications where particles have a high
mass-to-surface area ratio. Fine particles, fibers, and other material that tends to
float in the air will not be filtered very well by a cyclone. (In which case a simple after-filter is used to catch the
fines.)
Multi-cyclones are exactly what they sound like, a matrix of small
cyclones with common inlet, outlet, and dust discharge.
Each cyclone measures only 6” to 10” diameter, which makes
the system much more efficient than one large cyclone.
This is because the centrifugal force is much higher in a small
cyclone. Typical
applications include high temperature ash handling, and flue gas
filtration from oil and wood fired boilers.
After-Filter
Multi-Cyclone