Particle Trajectories in a Gas Centrifuge

The motion of spherical particles injected into a cylinder of gas which rotates as a solid body has been studied. The particle trajectory is expressed explicitly as a function of two dimensionless parameters; an injection-velocity parameter and an inertial parameter which is roughly the ratio of centrifugal force to drag force on the particle. The main results are the dependence on particle size of the time for particles to be centrifuged and of deposition angle. These results indicate performance limitations for an idealized cyclone separator and a centrifugal particle-size analyzer. Experimental data are presented for an air centrifuge which was designed to approximate the analytical flow model. Reasonably good agreement with theoretically predicted deposition angles was found for spherical glass beads and irregularly shaped chalk crystals, even to Reynolds numbers in excess of the Stokes flow regime for which the analysis applies. Particles as small as 2 microns may be classified with the present centrifuge configuration; however, by modification it might be used to classify particles in the submicron-size range.