What is a vortex tube and how does it work?

When we talked about the cyclone above, we mentioned the vortex tube, so today we will talk about the vortex tube in the cyclone.

The drilling fluid from the centrifugal pump enters the hydrocyclone tangentially through the slurry inlet on the side of the upper cylinder at high speed. The centrifugal force throws the solid phase in the vortex drilling fluid towards the wall. The drilling fluid containing liquid and solid phases spirals downward at high speed, and a large number of coarser and heavier particles move to the wall and move down the shell. Discharge with a small amount of drilling fluid at the opening of the underflow port, and the amount of discharge is controlled by the size of the underflow port. The swirling liquid entrained with fine particles is far away from the wall of the vessel and changes direction when approaching the bottom, forming an inner spiral that moves upward, and is discharged through the vortex conduit in the center of the cone.

The vortex conduit is a hollow round tube extending into the conical container, which can prevent the drilling fluid from being directly discharged from the overflow port, thereby causing the drilling fluid to move down into the fluid cavity. Under the action of centrifugal force, the swirling liquid enters the liquid chamber and rotates in the same direction, and the swirling flow that changes downward at the underflow begins to swirl upward toward the center of the swirling tube. In a balanced cyclone, the inner cylinder of the swirling liquid will surround the air column, which is formed by the air entering at the top of the cone. Solid particles and a small amount of liquid will be discharged from the bottom orifice of the cylinder. The size of the bottom orifice is related to the diameter of the vortex tube and determines the degree of dryness and wetness of the discharged solid phase.

To provide maximum separation efficiency, many balanced cyclones are designed with an inlet pressure head of 75ft. If the same pressure head is passed to the inlet of the cyclone, the drilling fluid will obtain the same velocity in the fluid cavity.

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