V3.4: Hydrocyclone Separator

(Related to Textbook Section 3.3 - F = ma Normal to a Streamline)

A hydrocyclone separator is a device that applies centrifugal force to a liquid mixture to separate the heavy and light components. It is a closed vessel that converts the incoming fluid motion into a rotary motion. Because of the centrifugal force of the spinning fluid, the heavy, large (orange) particles migrate to the underflow at the bottom and the light, small (dark) particles migrate to the overflow at the top of the separator.

The device shown is a hydrocyclone (i.e., the fluid entering tangentially into the main chamber is particle-laden water) with a central aircore. The flow shown is a physics-based animation derived from results of a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation for the given flow geometry.