| Abstract
| - The gas flow in and around once-through swirl tubesalso called axial flow cyclonesfor gas demisting hasbeen investigated by flow visualization using a neutrally boyant tracer and by computational fluid dynamics(CFD). The neutrally boyant tracer was helium-filled soap bubbles, which were made visible by illuminationwith sheets of white light and recorded by a variety of photographic techniques. The flowpatterns in the inletswirl vanes, the separation space, and the core of the vortex are shown as streak patterns. Additionally, it waspossible to study the breakdown of the vortex beyond the swirl tube outlet. Using high-speed photographyand dedicated software, velocity information was gleaned from the experiments. The experimental resultswere compared with CFD simulations wherein the renormalization group k−ε turbulence model was used tosimulate the flowpattern in the same configuration. The simulations matched the experimental results well inthe separation space itself but could not properly reproduce the complicated flow around the tube outlet.
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