The high-speed swirling flow field in a cyclone separator will cause the breakup of oil droplets because they collide with the wall

thus reducing the separation efficiency. Numerical simulation and experiment were done on separation efficiency and two-phase flow in oil-gas cyclone separators with different geometrical features. The gas flow field was simulated using the RNG k-ε turbulence model and the trajectory of the oil-droplets was calculated by the discrete particle model(DPM). The test rig was established to measure the efficiency of oil-gas cyclone separators with different geometrical features and inlet velocities. In the experiment

a Malvern particle size analyzer was applied to obtain the droplets diameter distribution at the inlet and outlet of the cyclone separator. The results show that the highest separation efficiency could be achieved with the optimum inlet velocity and structure parameters

and the droplets with diameters of larger than 25 μm could be easily separated. It appears that the predictions are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data when the DPM model considering the oil droplets breakup is used to simulate the separation efficiency of oil-gas cyclone separators.