99- Air vane separator for the design of water removers in compressed air pneumatic piping systems
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This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2023-9-27 at 14:27. In the pipeline transportation process of lightweight solids, compressed gas is often used as the medium for transporting these solid particles as a gas stream. For example, compressed air is used for transporting PE and PP powders; compressed air and CO2 are used for transporting pulverized coal in powder coal gasification units. Additionally, compressed air is employed for the vapor transport of polymer fibers such as PE/PP, cotton fibers, and paper fibers. Since air is cheap and readily available, companies often compress it as a cheap way to supply air currents. However, when air taken from the environment is compressed, some of the saturated water will precipitate out of the air. The higher the ambient humidity, the more condensate water will be released from the compressed air; this is especially true during rainy, snowy, or stormy weather, when even more condensate water is produced. The condensate carried in the air not only causes the process materials to become damp, but can also lead to caking and agglomeration of these materials, as well as frequent blockages in the pipelines. Regarding the separation of condensed water from compressed air under normal medium and low pressure conditions, vane separators are commonly used in process packages both domestically and internationally. Please discuss based on the technical application of compressed air dehumidifiers in your respective companies.
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:13. Typically, vane-type water separators for compressed air are installed at the lowest point of the intake pipeline.
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:14. The following diagram is a partial pipeline CAD drawing provided to us by a foreign company’s factory in China, showing the addition of vane separators to its compressed air pipelines:
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:15. Compressed air exits from the top of the cooling tower on the left side, then flows downward to the pipelines on the right side, where it enters the subsequent equipment through those pipelines. Since condensate water accumulates at the lowest point of the pipeline, it can even create liquid resistance, leading to pressure fluctuations in the pipeline and hindering air flow. As a result, the owner and the design institute requested the installation of a vane separator at the right-side inlet.
From this side view, everyone can understand the pipeline route more clearly:
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:15. It is precisely because the compressed air pipeline and the equipment that uses air on the right side are connected using double flanges, and the section of pipe between these double flanges is used to install a vane separator. The connection point is only 1 meter above the ground, making installation convenient.
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:16. After further communication with the owner and the design institute, we found that this location was indeed intended for installing a water remover. However, the compressed air water removers provided by their original supplier, as well as the simple Chevron baffle plate water removers that were designed and manufactured based on rough estimates or guesswork, had very poor water separation performance. It was the owner and the design institute that requested our team to use precise dynamics gas-liquid separation technology to recalculate and redesign the system platform, in order to reconfigure the vane separators and upgrade the existing compressed air dehumidifiers.
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2024-4-3 at 10:59. Please take a look at the original piping system and the installation of the original demister. It was only after suffering from the problems caused by counterfeit products that the owner realized the importance of seeking a professional company specializing in dynamic gas-liquid separation technology to accurately design and replace their original water removal devices.
Gas-liquid separation technology belongs to the category of precise kinetic separation techniques. It differs from the method of filtering and separating solid particles from a fluid, where the particle size remains essentially constant; in this approach, solid particles carrying contaminants are removed through simple blocking and interception by the \"pores\" formed by the interconnection of the fibers in the filtering elements. As the liquid droplets and mist carried in the airflow pass through the separation internals, their equivalent size changes significantly; they become longer and thinner during this passage, but immediately return to their original larger size under the effect of surface tension once they exit the internals. Therefore, gas-liquid separation often cannot achieve precise, quantitative, and efficient separation through methods that rely on interception and blocking by screens, filters, filter elements, or filtering media.
This post was last edited by luoli519 on 2022-11-30 at 18:16. A technical separator with reliable performance must be precisely designed using the system’s dynamic gas-liquid separation technology. It must include at least three essential elements: 1. The system platform design must be developed through accurate dynamics-based gas-liquid separation calculations, in order to precisely determine the kinetic energy, momentum of the fluid particles, and the net flow area required for effective separation ； 2. It is necessary to employ a precise design for the internal component configuration in order to ensure that the dynamic properties of the fluid at various points on the flow-through surfaces of these internal components are identical ； 3. High-efficiency, highly flexible in operation, and advanced-tech vanes separation internals must be used. All three are essential. Even when high-performance single-element internals are used, it is difficult to achieve ideal separation performance without utilizing a specialized and precise dynamic gas-liquid separation calculation and design system platform to accurately determine the kinetic energy, momentum of the fluid elements flowing through the internals, as well as the net flow area and the configuration of those internals; in such cases, the so-called \"ideal internals\" end up functioning like \"inferior internals\".
Indeed, as experienced by the aforementioned property owner, it is necessary for the property owner and the design firm to understand the development trends in the gas-liquid separation technology industry both domestically and internationally. At present, many domestic separator manufacturers, universities, and even numerous foreign manufacturers of filtration and separation equipment find it difficult to develop a complete, accurate, and systematic dynamic separation calculation and design platform within just a few years. In their work of designing gas-liquid separation technologies and equipment, they often rely on approximate estimates or even guesswork to determine the design parameters of the separators, and as a result, their actual operational efficiency can be predicted with fairly high accuracy.