Solid/Liquid Separation: Fundamentals and Applications

This webinar outlines a strategy for process owners and support personnel to guide design and insure tight integration of process properties and objectives with solid-liquid separation technologies.  The goal is to design more reliable and effective operations that optimize performance and cost.

A gap exists in the analysis of solid-liquid separations for chemical processes.  Although such separations are common and found in many diverse forms, understanding their behavior is not considered a core competency for today's process, improvement or run plant engineers. Instead, the accepted practice is to depend on specialty manufacturers to match process specifications to “proprietary” equipment which employs a particular separations technology. Several key, measurable properties of each phase in suspension, their relative magnitude, and the viable principles for phase separation combine to form a physical basis for design. Applying process objectives that define the extent of separation, the degree of phase purities, the scale and timing of throughput, and the availability of human and financial resources derives practical dimensions for a successful solution.  Equipment becomes the means of realizing this solution, and the selection of equipment can be traced to clear priorities and real requirements. The mapping of prominent types of filters and centrifuges to this solution space will be examined, emphasizing their regions of greatest advantage and sensible boundaries for their use.