One of the ways of improving the efficiency of a water-washing system for solids removal is to combine the advantages of the cyclone with that of the simple scrubber. In cyclone scrubber, the dirty gas is swirled around a cyclone while liquid is sprayed toward the walls of the cyclone to knock the particles out of the gas stream. Cyclonic scrubbers use a variation of the spray scrubbers where the spray nozzles are arranged in a ring and spray toward the cyclone wall. These cyclones are as effective on small particles because their mass is not sufficient to cause them to fall to the bottom of the cyclones. By adding the liquid spray, the liquid impinges on the dust particles, which makes them heavy enough to fall to the bottom of the cyclone for collection.

Cyclone separation is a technique of removing particulates from an air or gas stream, without the use of filters, through vortex separation. It is a simple device with no moving parts, cyclone separators use centrifugal forces generated by a rapidly spinning gas to separate solids from air. Dirty air entering the cyclone is forced into a spiral motion where the centrifugal forces push the particulates to the outer walls of the device where they can be collected and discharged. Cyclones can be used as precleaners ahead of bag houses and can be designed to handle a wider range of chemical and physical conditions than almost any other type of collection equipment.