Abstract: Hydrocyclone separator is one kind of filtration equipment that can separate the sediment from high silt content water by using the principles of rotational flow and centrifugal force. In recent years, research on hydrocyclone separator is mostly in the field of petroleum and chemical industry. Existing literature research and filtering equipment more focuses on low silt content water, but the study on high silt content water as micro-irrigation water source in water shortage areas is lack. This paper put forward a type of screen hydrocyclone separator for micro-irrigation, aimed to resolve the congestion problem of high silt content water as micro-irrigation water source. The screen hydrocyclone separator and conventional separator were compared through the experiment, which was done from October to December 2014 at the State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, Wuhan University. The experiment chose XLF200 screen hydrocyclone separator with the cylinder diameter of 200 mm, the water outlet diameter of 65 mm, the water inlet diameter of 50 mm, and the bottom outlet diameter of 50 mm. The experiment was designed for the screen hydrocyclone separator and conventional separator under the same condition, and took samples for overflow and bottom flow in different inlet pressure working conditions, and measured quantity of inlet flow, concentration of inlet flow, pressure difference of inlet flow and overflow, quantity of bottom flow, concentration of bottom flow, split ratio of bottom flow, quantity of overflow and concentration of overflow, so as to calculate respectively the separation efficiency and classification efficiency for the screen hydrocyclone separator and conventional separator. The results showed that the quantity of overflow and quantity of bottom flow increased with increasing the inlet pressure, but the split ratio of bottom flow increased with decreased inlet pressure for both the screen hydrocyclone separator and the conventional separator. 3 different working conditions with the inlet pressure of 0.26, 0.30 and 0.34 MPa were designed to analyze the classification efficiency. The results showed that the partition granularity of the screen hydrocyclone separator were 20.0, 25.0 and 22.5 μm, and the separation limit of the screen hydrocyclone separator were 83.5, 89.0 and 86.0 μm, and the separation accuracy of the screen hydrocyclone separator were 0.43, 0.40 and 0.43. The partition granularity of the conventional separator were 24.5, 27.5 and 24.5 μm, and the separation limit of the conventional separator were 86.0, 95.0 and 87.0 μm, and the separation accuracy of the conventional separator were 0.27, 0.42 and 0.34. If the separation efficiency by 80% was considered as the evaluation index, the average separation particle diameter of the screen hydrocyclone separator was 45.0 μm, but the average separation particle diameter of the conventional was 65.0 μm on the 3 different working conditions with the inlet pressure of 0.26, 0.30 and 0.34 MPa. Under the condition of different inlet pressure, experimental results showed that the separating efficiency and classification efficiency of the screen hydrocyclone separator were better than the conventional separator without screen. So the screen hydrocyclone separator was even more suitable to the requirement of micro-irrigation on water quality. The results provide valuable information for the optimization and also the development and production of the filters in micro-irrigation. Beyond that it will help to cut down the manufacturing and operating cost of the micro-irrigation project and accelerate the development of the micro-irrigation technology.