A simple procedure for design and performance prediction of Bradley and Rietema hydrocyclones

Hydrocyclones were originally designed to promote solid-liquid separations but nowadays they are also used for solid-solid, liquid-liquid and gas-liqu id separations. Although a hydrocyclone is a very simple equipment to build , the we of custom-made cyclones is not widely used. This is probably due t o the lack of a simple procedure for hydrocyclone design. In the present wo rk a procedure is presented which allows the design and performance predict ion of hydrocyclones that follow Bradley and Rietema recommended geometries , that are the only two well-known families of geometrically similar hydroc yclones. The procedure proposed here resulted in little error, when the res ults were compared with experimental data. Additionally, a comparison of bo th families of hydrocyclones revealed that, for a given hydrocyclone diamet er and at the same operational conditions, Bradley hydrocyclones provide hi gher efficiencies, while Rietema hydrocyclones give higher capacities. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.