CFD based design of blast furnace gas cleaning cyclone separator

The paper focuses on the design of the geometry and operational parameters of a cyclone separator. Its main objective is to identify a combination of dimensional and flow parameters that enables the efficient capture of large particles containing carbon and iron, while allowing particles rich in zinc and lead to pass through. The cyclone separator is intended to separate dust with a high content of valuable materials so that it can be reprocessed in a blast furnace. A computational fluid dynamics model, previously validated against similar datasets, is employed to support the design process. Three different geometries and inlet velocities ranging from 2 m/s to 12 m/s were tested to determine the most effective configuration. Depending on the selected parameters, the overall separation efficiency varied between 46% and 93%. Specifically, the system achieved separation efficiencies of 60–95% for carbon, 38–90% for iron, and 14–67% for zinc. The final design reached an overall efficiency of 86.5%, successfully separating over 90% of carbon, more than 80% of iron, as well as 45% of zinc and 55% of lead.