How Do Dust Collectors Work?

Dust collectors are used in industry or other commercial places. It is necessary to know how do dust collectors work. Especially if you are a guy, who needs to deal with this thing. Even if you don’t have to work with them, you should know about them as they are really useful equipment. These machines are used to separate the dust from the gas and store the dust in dust store. There are different kinds of dust cleaners. They are used in different commercial shop and industry to clear dust from gas or air.

How Do Dust Collectors Work

The dust collector has a different name. Some call them cyclone separator. The intake gas then they remove the dust from the gas and separate the clean gas from the dust. Different kind of dust collector exists. Such as horizontal or vertical. The dust collector can be organized in series and parallel according to the requirement. According to the functionality, industrial dust cleaners are two types.

Reverse Flow

In this type of dust collector, gas enters horizontally at the top of the cylinder then it goes straight down. There is also an upper movement of gas. The dust comes out of the lower level of the cylinder. Clean gas comes out of the upper outlet.

Axial Flow

In this dust, collector gas flows towards the lower part of the cylinder. In this type of dust, collector gas enters vertically at the upper intake and comes out clean from the lower outlet. There is a swirl generator that removes the dust from the gas and sends the clean gas to the outlet.

Properties of Dust Collector

We will explain the reverse flow dust collector in this article. The reason behind that is that revers flow dust collectors are more commonly used.

This dust collector has a cylindrical shape, and the upper level is wider. Then the lower part gets narrower. It looks a little bit like a funnel. The upper wide area is called the body, while the lower narrower part is called the cone. The dust storage is situated at the end of the cone. Clean gas comes out of the upper body. The dirty gas is inserted at the upper body too. The cylinder may remain both horizontal and vertical. Reject port contains dust and dirt from the gas while accepting port at the body emits clean gas

Work Process

To know how do dust collectors work, you need to keep one thing in your mind. How much clean gas you will get from the dust collector, will depend upon some factors. You might not get totally clean gas from a dust collector. The various dust collector has different efficiency.

Now let’s see how do dust collector work. I will divide the work process into steps for your ease of understanding. They will contain some engineering jargon. I hope you understand them properly.

Step 1

First dirty gases enter through the inlets of the cylinder. When they enter into the cylinder, they take the shape of a cyclone. Which creates a vortex that goes downward. As I mentioned before the lower part of these cylinders, get narrower gradually. That’s why the velocity of the vortex of dirty air begins to increase while going down towards rejecting port.

Step 2

From here, things will be a little bit confusing, bear with me a little bit. When the downward flow of the vortex crush with the lower level it generates an upward going vortex which goes towards the outlet.

Thus you have two opposite going vortex in the cylinder. I have to mention something important for your understanding. A bigger particle has bigger inertia, and the smaller particle has lower inertia. A gas molecule is small. That’s why they have lower inertia and debris has higher inertia.

A particle with higher inertia is hard to move, but a lower inertia particle can be easily moved. Remember this while I am explaining this. When two opposite vortex collides, the light gas molecule gets pushed away from the original stream. But the debris and dirt don’t get pushed away easily as they have higher inertia. That’s why they remain with the stream and end up at the reject port.

Step 3

The air that goes upward is the clean air. Which comes out of the cylinder outlet. The collision between these two vortexes is the main force that cleans the dirt from the gas. Dirt due to their heavy inertia doesn’t change the path. Thus the clean gas goes upward via upper vortex and reaches the outlet.

The Efficiency of the Dust Collector

Dirt has more inertia than a gas molecule. But all the dust cleaner can not remove a hundred percent of the dust from gas. There are several reasons behind it. One of the probable reason is that not all dirt is heavy. Some are so light that they have very low inertia. That’s why they get pushed away by the upper vortex and get mixed with the clean gas. There are other causes too. You can study deep into this to know more.

Conclusion

The different dust collector has different configuration. You choose your own according to your requirement. But do maintain safety procedure while using it. If you think you should not operate it, find someone who has expertise in this.

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