An improved design of irrigation centrifugal filter for separating water and fine sediment: appropriately increase head loss for high efficiency

Abstract

Centrifugal filters commonly used in irrigation systems are able to separate coarse-grained sediments larger than 100 μm. Improving the filter structural characteristics and separation efficiency of fine-grained sediment has become an issue that needs to be solved. Therefore, a combination of experiment and numerical simulation was used to assess the effect of volute optimized design and semi-closed inlets on centrifugal filter separation efficiency and energy consumption. The results show that balancing the relationship between the separation efficiency and head loss, the improvement of the filter structure optimizes its internal flow field, and the filter head loss can be appropriately increased to greatly improve the separation efficiency of fine sediment. Compared with a conventional centrifugal filter, the volute optimized centrifugal filter synergistically improved the fine particle separation efficiency (22.83–123.19%) and reduced the head loss (39.06–45.98%), while the semi-closed inlet improved the separation efficiency of particle diameters above 30 μm by 14.29–60.56% and increased the head loss (18.73–28.16%). The combination of the two previous improvements and the reduction of the filter volume further improved the separation efficiency (21.99–65.10%) but gradually increased the head loss. This study provides a new perspective for improved centrifugal filters with an efficient, broadly applicable experimental design for studying the potential implications for highly Turbidity water utilization in irrigation