EFFECT OF SWIRL ON SEPARATION PERFORMANCE OF A NEW SPRAY GRANULATION TOWER

摘要

A number of new techniques have been developed for efficient and clean utilization of heavy oil due to the increasing problems with natural resources shortage and environment deterioration. Among those, heavy oil stage separation is a technique using solvent deasphalting.1 A major advantage of this process lies in that the solvent in asphalt phase is recovered at atmospheric pressure and low temperature through granulation of asphalt, which results in a simplified process flow and reduced investment. An array nozzle distributor was introduced into a conventional cylinder-on-cone tower in order to meet the need of high solvent recovery rate in this process.3 Experimental studie demonstrated that particles of lower densities could be separated from the gaseous solvent more easily under the combined action of centrifugal and gravitational forces in the new granulation tower. In this work, the effect of swirl on separation performance is investigated using CFD technique, which has been widely used for engineering design and optimization.