Objective Conventional swirl vane demisters are widely employed in industrial wet flue gas desulfurization (WFGD) systems for gas liquid separation. However, they suffer from high operational pressure drop, severe wall erosion, and a sharp decline in demisting efficiency at elevated gas velocities, primarily due to the breakup and re‑entrainment of the wall liquid film under strong gas shear. These inherent drawbacks make it increasingly challenging to meet the stringent ultra‑low emission requirements of modern industrial flue gas purification systems. To overcome these limitations, the present study proposes a novel arc‑shaped guide vane demister to simultaneously achieve high demisting efficiency, low flow resistance, and reduced wall erosion risk. The gas liquid separation performance and underlying flow mechanisms of the proposed demister are systematically investigated using numerical simulations. Methods A gas liquid two‑phase flow numerical model was established within an Eulerian-Lagrangian framework. The continuous gas phase was treated as an incompressible Newtonian fluid and solved using the Reynolds‑averaged Navier-Stokes equations. The shear stress transport k‒ω turbulence model was adopted to describe the turbulent gas flow because it offers a balance between accuracy in predicting complex swirling flows and computational efficiency. The discrete phase model was used to track droplet trajectories in a Lagrangian framework, and the discrete random walk model was coupled to account for the stochastic effects of turbulent fluctuations on droplet dispersion. The droplet motion equation incorporated the coupled effects of drag, centrifugal, and gravitational forces, with the drag coefficient calculated using the Morsi‒Alexander model, which is applicable over a wide range of Reynolds numbers. The droplets were assumed to be spherical, and inter‑droplet collision, coalescence, and breakup were neglected because of the low inlet droplet volume fraction (approximately 1.0×10-4). The walls were specified as ideal trap boundaries, such that droplets impacting the wall were considered captured. The formation and evolution of wall liquid films and their re‑entrainment at high gas velocities were not considered because the present study focuses on structural optimization and comparative performance analysis. The geometric model of the guide vane demister consisted of a cylindrical shell with inner diameter of 284 mm, a central column diameter of 142 mm (0.5 times the shell diameter), and five arc‑shaped guide vanes with an outlet angle of 45°, a vane height h of 300 mm, and a vane thickness of 3 mm. The inlet and outlet section heights were 200 mm and 2 000 mm, respectively, consistent with those of the conventional swirl vane demister to ensure a fair comparison. The computational domain was discretized using a structured hexahedral mesh with local refinement near the vane walls. A grid independence test was performed using three meshes containing 1.23, 1.80, and 2.48 million cells, respectively, and the medium mesh was selected as a compromise between numerical accuracy and computational cost. The boundary conditions consisted of a velocity inlet at the bottom, with an inlet velocity range of 1.76‒3.49 m/s, and a pressure outlet at the top with zero static pressure. No‑slip wall conditions with standard wall functions were applied to the solid surfaces. To validate the numerical model, simulations were first performed for a conventional swirl vane demister with dimensions identical to those reported in the literature. The predicted pressure drop and demisting efficiency were then compared with the corresponding experimental data reported in the literature. After validation, three‑dimensional simulations were conducted for the proposed guide vane demister, and its performance was systematically compared with that of the conventional design in terms of velocity fields, pressure distributions, turbulent kinetic energy, droplet concentration contours, and overall separation performance. Results and Discussions The model validation results showed good agreement between the numerical predictions and experimental measurements for the conventional swirl vane demister. The relative errors in pressure drop and demisting efficiency at all tested velocities were within 5%, supporting the reliability and accuracy of the adopted numerical approach for simulating gas-liquid swirling flows. For the guide vane demister, flow field analysis revealed the formation of a stable Rankine-type vortex structure inside the separator, characterized by a tangential velocity distribution that was relatively low in the central region and increased toward the wall, with a distinct forced‑vortex core and a free‑vortex outer region. At a representative inlet gas velocity of 2.16 m/s, the pressure, velocity, and droplet concentration fields exhibited typical center‑to‑wall gradient distributions. Compared with the conventional swirl vane demister, several significant improvements were observed. 1) The peak tangential velocity decreased from approximately 7.5 m/s to approximately 4.0 m/s, corresponding to a reduction of approximately 40%, while the tangential velocity profile became more uniform in the radial direction and exhibited a more gradual axial decay. This substantial reduction in near‑wall gas velocity reduced the momentum of droplets impacting the wall surface, thereby decreasing the potential for wall erosion. 2) The operational pressure drop decreased by 30%‒40% over the simulated inlet gas velocity range (1.76‒3.29 m/s). The pressure field exhibited a smooth radial pressure gradient without pronounced local variations, which contributed to the significantly lower flow resistance compared with the conventional swirl vane design. 3) The demisting efficiency of the guide vane demister was consistently higher than that of the conventional design under all tested conditions. When the inlet gas velocity exceeded 2.78 m/s, the separation efficiency approached a stable plateau of approximately 100%, indicating complete droplet capture under the simulated conditions. In contrast, the efficiency of the conventional demister was maintained above 90% but remained lower than that of the guide vane design. Furthermore, the droplet concentration contours indicated that most droplets were efficiently transported toward the wall and subsequently captured, with minimal droplet carryover in the outlet stream. Overall, these quantitative comparisons confirm that the guide vane demister achieved the desired multi‑objective optimization: high demisting efficiency, low operational energy consumption, and reduced wall erosion risk. Conclusions This study demonstrated that the proposed arc‑shaped guide vane demister offers a viable approach to addressing the performance limitations of conventional swirl vane demisters in WFGD applications. The numerical results indicate that, owing to its streamlined flow passages, the proposed design substantially suppresses the leeward vortex zone and promotes a more uniform centrifugal flow field. This enhances droplet capture while also simultaneously significantly reducing pressure drop and the potential for wall erosion. These findings provide a reliable theoretical foundation for the design and optimization of high‑performance demisters in industrial flue gas purification systems. It should be noted that the present study was conducted entirely using numerical simulations. Future experimental validation using a cold‑test prototype based on the optimized geometric parameters is therefore recommended to further verify the reliability of the simulation results.
采用基于压力的求解器。压力-速度耦合采用Coupled算法;动量、湍动能和比耗散率均采用二阶迎风(second order upwind)离散格式以提高计算精度;残差收敛标准设为10-3。需要说明的是,本文采用标准DPM模型,未考虑液滴间的碰撞与聚并。原因在于入口液滴浓度较低(体积分数约1.0×10-4),属于稀疏气液两相流,液滴间碰撞概率极低,该简化符合此类工况的常规处理惯例。
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