Make:

This may or may not be acting like the cyclone pictured on the right, but given the arrangement I doubt it. I think what it might be doing is providing a trap for heavier items to fall out of the airstream at the bucket. To get an effective cyclone, you need to introduce the airstream to the cylinder body at a tangent, causing the air to spin around on the inside wall of the cylinder. Anything with enough mass (any solids) will get flung to the wall and travel the helical path downward to the underflow point (where its says 'dirt' in the diagram). Light particles and much of the air form a counter-rotating vortex that travels up the centre of the device and exits at the top port. Smaller diameter cyclones will create larger centrifugal force and remove finer, lighter particles, which is why the newer cyclonic vacuum cleaners use a bank of small diameter cyclones, rather than the single or dual designs of a few years back.

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Posted by: Sean Michael Ragan on October 15, 2009 at 12:38 PM

I probably should've been a bit more careful about juxtaposing that picture with that diagram. Thanks for taking the time to share your understanding.

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