Hydrocyclone for pre-filtering of irrigation water

Abstract

The use of water containing suspended sediments causes serious problems to irrigation systems. Choosing the right filtering system type and capacity is essential to avoid increases in operational and maintenance costs of irrigation resulting from the need for cleaning and frequent component replacing. Prefilters, such as the hydrocyclone, are important for their significant capability of retaining particles suspended in the water. Data on hydrocyclones performance for pre-filtering of irrigation water can be found in the literature, but research data in Brazil are scarce. Therefore, four Rietema type hydrocyclones (50 mm diameter) were constructed, one with circular-end and the other three presenting rectangular-end feeding tubes. The evaluation of hydrocyclones performance was conducted by using suspensions of fine sand and clay soil particles under varied pressure differentials. The comparison criteria were the discharge and the separation capability, given by total efficiency and reduced total efficiency. The hydrocyclone with circular-end feeding tube presented the highest indexes for the adopted criteria, considering sand and soil suspensions. Key words: filtration, cyclones, centrifugal separator HIDROCICLONE PARA PRÉ-FILTRAGEM DA ÁGUA DE IRRIGAÇÃORESUMO: A utilização de água contendo partículas sólidas em suspensão tem sido a causa de sérios problemas em sistemas de irrigação. A escolha do tipo e capacidade do sistema de filtragem é de fundamental importância para evitar aumento nos custos de operação e manutenção do sistema de irrigação. Pré-filtros, como os hidrociclones, caracterizam-se por significativo poder de separação de partículas presentes na água. Apesar de algumas referências feitas aos hidrociclones, não se dispõe no Brasil de resultados do desempenho dos mesmos, quando empregados em pré-filtragem da água utilizada nos sistemas de irrigação. Assim, um experimento compreendeu a construção e a avaliação do desempenho de quatro hidrociclones do tipo Rietema, utilizando-se suspensões de areia fina e de solo argiloso, sob diferentes diferenciais de pressão, e adotandose como critério de comparação a capacidade de vazão e o poder de separação, medidos pela eficiência total e eficiência total reduzida. O hidrociclone dotado com bocal de alimentação circular apresentou os maiores índices nos critérios de comparação, com suspensão de areia e suspensão de solo.

Fruit and vegetable wash-water characterization, treatment feasibility study and decision matrices

“…Hydrocyclones have been used in many applications of solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separation (oil and water) (Son et al 2016). Its simplicity of operation, lack of moving parts (other than the pump) and low maintenance costs make it advantageous to use in small-scale operations or low-technology processing, where it can easily be fitted to an existing pump (Bain and Morgan 1983;Hwang et al 2012;Soccol and Botrel 2004;Yang et al 2013). Literature review did not show any commercial applications specific to fresh produce washing/processing.…”

Fruit and Vegetable Wash-Water Characterization, Treatment Feasibility Study and Decision Matrices

“…Hydrocyclones have been used in many applications of solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separation (oil and water) (Son et al 2016). Its simplicity of operation, lack of moving parts (other than the pump) and low maintenance costs make it advantageous to use in small-scale operations or low-technology processing, where it can easily be fitted to an existing pump (Bain and Morgan 1983;Hwang et al 2012;Soccol and Botrel 2004; D r a f t to fresh produce washing/processing. However, hydrocyclones have been conventionally used for potato starch separation, grit removal from wastewaters, and in the wet milling industry for starch-protein separation (Verberne 1997;Mansour-Geoffrion et al 2010;Singh and Eckhoff 1995).…”

Computer simulation of a Rietema-family hydrocyclone used in irrigated agriculture1

“…The constituent parts and geometrical parameters of the hydrocyclone used in this simulation are the same used by Soccol (2004), and can be seen in Figure 1a and 1b respectively.…”

“…In a study, Soccol (2004) showed that the average separation efficiency of a hydrocyclone was 37.73% when operating with soil in suspension and 82.02% when operating with sand in suspension. The lower efficiency in separating soil was due in large part to the high concentration of silt content in the soil used (particles with diameters between 2 and 30 µm).…”

“…An average particle size was therefore chosen, equal to 15 µm. Conditions for the simulation of multiphase flow can be seen in Tables 4 and 5. For the conditions specified above, the results of the simulation using the Eulerian multiphase model were again compared to the experimental data obtained by Soccol (2004). Table 6 shows the results of this comparison.…”