About Advanced Cyclone Systems

Advanced Cyclone Systems, S.A. (ACS) is a company exclusively dedicated to the development and commercialization of the most efficient cyclone systems worldwide.

ACS mission is to achieve total particle capture with cyclone systems, avoiding the use bag filters.

Applications include particulate matter (PM) emission control in boilers, furnaces and dryers, achieving emissions as low as 30 mg/Nm3, and high efficiency powder recovery in the chemical, food and pharmaceutical industries.

ACS works in a very close cooperation with its clients in order to design "custom made" cyclone systems that really solve their problems.

Surprising results are achieved thanks to a completely new set of cyclone patented geometries – Hurricane – and to an innovative cyclone configuration – ReCyclone® systems. This last technology was the winner of the 2008 National Environmental Innovation Award.

The problem about particle collection

Industrial cyclones are for their robust construction, absence of maintenance and general application, the preferred technology for particle collection.

Nevertheless, cyclones' relatively low efficiency, particularly for small particles (< 10 μm), leads many users to complement them with Bag Filters (BFs) or Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs).

Generally, clients are unsatisfied with other alternatives for different reasons:

• BFs often have operational problems (high temperature or glowing particles, condensation, product contamination) or high maintenance costs (expensive filter medium and frequent change of bags);
• ESPs don’t have a general application and imply high investment costs, which are inaccessible to many industries.

The ReCyclone^® Solution

Patented ReCyclone® systems are based on a numerically optimized cyclone geometry, different from any other in the market (Hurricane), and an innovative recirculation system. In result of these innovations, ReCyclone® systems efficiency is by far superior to that of any other cyclone system in the market and equivalent to that of ESPs. Being much simpler equipments, ReCyclone® systems have 2 to 3 times lower investment costs than ESPs, assuring them to be very competitive on a global scale and usable by small to medium size companies that do not have the resources to buy ESPs, or to cope with high maintenance costs of BFs and fire hazards.

How do they work?

Mechanical and electrostatic recirculation

In order to obtain high efficiencies, comparable to BFs or ESPs, an improved recirculation system has been designed to take advantage of the Hurricane cyclone. Recirculation is achieved by placing a recirculator (straight-through cyclone) downstream to the cyclone collector. The only purpose of the recirculator is to separate the particles from the exhaust gas, concentrating them in the recirculation stream. Recirculation is achieved through a venturi or an additional fan.

All particles are exclusively collected in the cyclone and the need of moving parts is avoided. Efficiency rises due to agglomeration of very fine recirculated particles with coarser ones coming from the process (example: boiler). Mechanical ReCyclone® (MH) systems decrease emissions by 40-60 % as compared with Hurricane cyclones and 75 %, when compared with Multicyclones.

Recent adoption of electrostatic recirculation (ReCyclone® EH) in the same system has successfully proven to further reduce particulate emissions, even in the [1;5] μm particle size range, assuring future regulation compliance, particularly where legal limits are very tight. A DC high voltage is applied to the concentrators, allowing the recirculation of very fine (submicrometer) particles to the cyclone collector. Electrically charged fine particles come into contact with uncharged particles emitted from the processes, promoting their agglomeration and easier capture.

Since particles are not captured by electrodes, contrary to ESPs, the recirculators are immune to either low or high dust electrical resistivity, and the HV power is only 10 to 15 % of that used with ESPs.

Compared to BFs, electrostatic ReCyclone® (EH) systems have much lower maintenance costs, are immune to fire hazards due to glowing particles, typically present in biomass and coal combustion flue gases, and can operate at much higher temperatures.

Contents can be downloaded in www.acsystems.pt and an animation of the technology can be seen in Youtube. You can also follow ACS in LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.