Abstract Cyclones are the most widely used separators at present, but it's still difficult to reduce their size to serve as pipe separators. A new type of gas liquid pipe separator for high velocity wet gas is proposed in this paper. The separator is actually a short section of pipe, with a centrifugal device in the center portion and 3 narrow tangential conduits (NTC) in the pipe wall. As gas liquid mixture flows through the centrifugal device downwardly, a strong rotation flow is created. Liquid in the mixture is pushed to the pipe wall by centrifugal force and forms a uniform liquid film with high tangential velocity. Then nearly all the liquid film can directly enter the NTC and be discharged from the pipe relying on its own kinetic energy and inertial, because of the little resistance characteristic of NTC to the liquid film, therefore the whole separation process can be completed within the pipe. The swirl characteristics in the pipe were studied by numerical method, and the simulation results indicated that the swirling liquid film is fairly uniform and the suitable installation position for NTC is about 2.5 pipe diameters downstream of the centrifugal device. A separation model for the pipe separator was established and experiments were carried out to verify the proposed model. The superficial velocity ranges of gas and liquid were 22–72 m/s and 0.07–0.54 m/s, respectively. The experimental results showed that the separation efficiency always increases with the increase of both gas and liquid superficial velocity, generally it is over 0.81, and the maximum attainable is 0.97. However, the separation efficiency will begin to drop if liquid superficial velocity exceeds the critical value UCSL, due to the onset of unstable liquid film waves. Experimental results also showed that UCSL increases with the increase of gas velocity.

中文翻译：

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一种用于高速湿气分离的新型离心式气液管分离器

摘要 旋风分离器是目前应用最广泛的分离器，但仍难以缩小其尺寸以用作管道分离器。本文提出了一种用于高速湿气的新型气液管道分离器。分离器实际上是一小段管道，在中心部分有一个离心装置，在管壁中有 3 个狭窄的切向导管 (NTC)。当气液混合物向下流过离心装置时，产生强烈的旋转流。混合物中的液体在离心力的作用下被推向管壁，并形成具有高切向速度的均匀液膜。那么几乎所有的液膜都可以依靠自身的动能和惯性直接进入NTC并从管道中排出，因为NTC对液膜的阻力很小，因此整个分离过程可以在管道内完成。采用数值方法研究了管道内的旋流特性，模拟结果表明旋流液膜相当均匀，NTC的合适安装位置为离心装置下游约2.5管径处。建立了管道分离器的分离模型，并通过实验验证了所提出的模型。气体和液体的表观速度范围分别为 22-72 m/s 和 0.07-0.54 m/s。实验结果表明，分离效率总是随着气液空塔速度的增加而增加，一般在0.81以上，最高可达0.97。然而，如果液体表面速度超过临界值 UCSL，由于不稳定的液膜波的出现，分离效率将开始下降。实验结果还表明UCSL随着气体速度的增加而增加。