OK, seaglf
But this is the part I was wondering about. CCVs were installed to prevent an accumulation of pressure. If you watch the two videos in my last post, the healthy car had so little air movement that you could not see it. So, it seems to me that without air movement, there would be no cyclonic action. A Dyson has a fan to move the air at high speed to make it work. Otherwise, it will do absolutely nothing. It makes me wonder if there is anything in the BMW that creates air movement. Even that would seem incongruous because the valve cover is essentially a sealed container (the oil fill cap is sealed, the valve cover has a gasket seal). The only place you get circulation is through the valve seals caused by any blowby. Since healthy engines have very little blowby, there should be negligible air flow. Negligible air flow, no cyclonic action. I also asked if there was a particulate filter in the unit that was replaceable. The one photo looked like there was a filter, but the unit also looks sealed.
I understand the premise, but with little or no air velocity, there is no cyclonic action. Remove the breather hose on your valve cover, and put the two fingers loosely over the opening, and tell me how much air you feel leaking through. May I suggest doing this with a cold engine, so you don't burn yourself? My Mercedes engine seems to have great compression, but when I do this, I feel little. I was trying to understand the attraction of doing this, since logic tells it does little when you have a healthy engine.