A vortex breaker is a device used in engineering to stop the formation of a vortex

Vortex

A vortex is a spinning, often turbulent,flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed streamlines is vortex flow. The motion of the fluid swirling rapidly around a center is called a vortex...

 when a fluid

Fluid

In physics, a fluid is a substance that continually deforms under an applied shear stress. Fluids are a subset of the phases of matter and include liquids, gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids....

 (liquid

Liquid

Liquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...

 or gas

Gas

Gas is one of the three classical states of matter . Near absolute zero, a substance exists as a solid. As heat is added to this substance it melts into a liquid at its melting point , boils into a gas at its boiling point, and if heated high enough would enter a plasma state in which the electrons...

) is drained from a vessel such as a tank or vapor-liquid separator

Vapor-liquid separator

A vapor–liquid separator is a device used in several industrial applications to separate a vapor–liquid mixture.For the common variety, gravity is utilized in a vertical vessel to cause the liquid to settle to the bottom of the vessel, where it is withdrawn....

. The formation of vortices can entrain

Entrainment (engineering)

Entrainment as commonly used in various branches of engineering may be defined as the entrapment of one substance by another substance. For example:* The entrapment of liquid droplets or solid particulates in a flowing gas, as with smoke....

 vapor

Vapor

A vapor or vapour is a substance in the gas phase at a temperature lower than its critical point....

 in the liquid stream, leading to poor separation in process steps such as distillation

Distillation

Distillation is a method of separating mixtures based on differences in volatilities of components in a boiling liquid mixture. Distillation is a unit operation, or a physical separation process, and not a chemical reaction....

 or excessive pressure drop,
or causing cavitation

Cavitation

Cavitation is the formation and then immediate implosion of cavities in a liquidi.e. small liquid-free zones that are the consequence of forces acting upon the liquid...

 of downstream pump

Pump

A pump is a device used to move fluids, such as liquids, gases or slurries.A pump displaces a volume by physical or mechanical action. Pumps fall into three major groups: direct lift, displacement, and gravity pumps...

s.
Vortices can also re-entrain solid particles previously separated from a gas stream in a solid-gas separation device such as a cyclone

Cyclonic separation

Cyclonic separation is a method of removing particulates from an air, gas or liquid stream, without the use of filters, through vortex separation. Rotational effects and gravity are used to separate mixtures of solids and fluids...

.

Design

Many different designs of vortex breaker are available. Some use radial vanes or baffles around the liquid exit to stop some of the angular velocity

Angular velocity

In physics, the angular velocity is a vector quantity which specifies the angular speed of an object and the axis about which the object is rotating. The SI unit of angular velocity is radians per second, although it may be measured in other units such as degrees per second, revolutions per...

 of the liquid. The "floor grate" design uses a system of grating similar to the metal floor of a catwalk. Different authors give different rules of thumb for vortex breaker design.