Numerical investigation of the effect of DBD plasma actuator on performance enhancement of an air-solid particle cyclone separator

In this paper, the effect of secondary flow induced by the DBD plasma actuators on the flow and separation performance of solid particles in a cyclone is numerically investigated. The finite volume method is used to solve the equations. In this study, the effect of the effective parameters such as the applied voltage of the DBD plasma actuator, the arrangement of plasma actuators, the velocity of the incoming flow of the cyclone, and the size of solid particles are evaluated. The results indicate that in presence of DBD plasma actuators inside the cyclone, by reducing the velocity of the inlet flow to the cyclone, the particle separation performance of the cyclone is increased. Also, it is obvious that the separation performance of the cyclone in the presence of the DBD plasma actuators increases in all particles with different diameters between 1 and 2 mm, compared to the cyclone without the presence of plasma actuator, and the performance enhancement is greater in the particles with a larger diameter (2 mm). The results indicate that by increasing the applied voltage of the DBD plasma actuators, the maximum tangential velocity and particle separation performance of the cyclone increase. Results show that the use of the DBD plasma actuators inside the cyclone can increase the cyclone separation performance by 26.5% compared to the cyclone without the DBD plasma actuator.