Apparatus for the centrifugal separation of a mixture of phases

An apparatus for the centrifugal separation of a mixture including at least one gaseous phase comprising a fixed enclosure, a rotatable element in said closure constituted by a treatment rotor incorporating perforated discs offset angularly one from the other, upstream by a rotatable distributor and downstream by a ventilator with the possible interposition of a rotatable diffuser, whereby the mixture to be treated flows in a laminary manner through the perforations of the discs in active helicoidal streams rotating much more quickly than the rotor and separated by dead helicoidal sheets rotating substantially at the same speed as said rotor and in which the heavy phase to be separated passes between the discs as far as a fixed part of the enclosure where it is collected and evacuated, said apparatus further comprising an upstream chamber for suction of the mixture to be treated and a downstream chamber for collecting the separated gaseous phase, said treatment rotor being interposed between said chambers and comprising a coaxial hollow tubular shafting, end openings in said shafting located in said collecting chamber which communicates said downstream collecting chamber with a chamber of said ventilator, a partition in said enclosure separating said chamber of said ventilator from the upstream suction chamber, and a further partitioning in said enclosure for separating the collecting chamber, on the one hand, from the peripheral zone of the enclosure in which the separated heavy phase arrives and there is established a helicoidal leakage flow in the same axial direction as that of the principal flow of the mixture through the rotor, and on the other hand from a conical extension of the enclosure forming a cyclone and receiving the leakage flow charged with heavy phase to trap and collect the latter.