Cyclone filter assembly question.

[Paul Wells]

Has anyone done a cyclone with the filters assembled side by side instead of stacked? I was thinking of coming out of the separator to a plenum with the two filters attached side by side and having a dual dust tray on the bottom. Maybe a diverter to split the airstream to each of the filters. Has anyone tried something like this? Any ideas?

[Steve Peterson]

Welcome to the forum Paul. Your idea is certainly quite possible. ClearVue has a forum with a photo section and I bet there are several photos showing side by side filters. There are almost no restrictions on the ducting downstream from the blower. You can make a manifold with filters coming off wherever needed. The cross sectional area should be at least as large as the exit. It can also be larger since there are no minimum air speed limits. Of course it needs to be air tight.

Steve

[Paul Wells]

Thanks, and I'll check out that site for examples. I thought that would be the case, and I appreciate your help.

[Wade Lippman]

There are almost no restrictions on the ducting downstream from the blower. You can make a manifold with filters coming off wherever needed. The cross sectional area should be at least as large as the exit. It can also be larger since there are no minimum air speed limits.

You could just have easily have said 'The cross section area of the exit should be at least as large as that of the manifold. It can also be larger.'

Point is, you want both to be large enough so that they are overly restrictive; it doesn't matter which is larger. Unless you enlarge the opening on the cyclone, that will likely be the bottleneck; but since that is how it was designed, it will be adequate.

[David Kumm]

I have four nano cartridges attached to a plywood plenum. Screwed and caulked. The filters are flanged and the flanges are screwed and caulked into the 1/2" bottom. Sides are 3/4". Dave

[Drew Pavlak]

Paul,

I used 3/4" melamine and built a box I think it was about 10"-12" high, about 42" long and 16"-18" wide. the exhaust from my ClearVue uses 8" flexible duct down to the box. I cut 2 holes in the box for the filters to sit over and then used some foam that I secured to the bottom of the filters with spray adhesive. for lids I used 3/4" MDF and more foam to seal the top lid. I secure the filters with threaded rod that goes through the bottom of the box through the MDF lid on top of each filter. Then a threaded knob lets me tighten them down nice and snug.

No problems so far, I put a piece of lexan in the box as well so that I can see if there is any debris in there at all and so far (about 8 months) not much gets in there. If I get a few minutes I will try to snap some pics and post them. My whole thought process was that if debris did get to the filters it would be harder for it to go up into the filters than if they were attached directly to the exhaust and just allowed to go down into them.

Also there is a lot of talk about different things reducing the efficiency of the DC, frankly my ClearVue SUCKS! And not in a bad way. I have not noticed any short comings by taking this route.

Flanges I got off of Amazon. I think they are meant to go on squirrel cage fans, but they worked out really nicely.

Drew

[terry mccammon]

I have exactly the setup that you mention in your original post. 9" connection into the top, a plywood plenum with two filters coming out of the bottom. They stand on a box with an inspection/cleanout door. I check it once a year and there are a few cups of stuff to vacuum out.

[Bill Adamsen]

I built a plenum for side-by-side configuration. I will say that it would be easier to maintain if I had better access to maintain in-situ. Removing the cartridges to clean out is a job.

The cartridges are raised high enough that I could stack another pair underneath getting four total. When I was planning/designing the system, Dick Wynn suggested two would be fine. That height and stacking approach gave me a fallback plan in case the original air volume estimate proved wrong. Which it didn't.