(559a) A New Method for Analyzing and Designing Filter Press Separations
AIChE Annual Meeting
2012
2012 AIChE Annual Meeting
Separations Division
Fluid-Solids Separation in Energy and Environmental Systems
Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - 3:15pm to 3:40pm
Raymond Collins, Engineering and Process Sciences, The Dow Chemical Co., Midland, MI
A non-traditional model describing the separation of particulate
solids from a liquid suspension by pressure-driven flow through a permeable
barrier has been successfully applied to the design of several filter press
applications. This flow model was derived
by applying fundamental physical principles to the unsteady, mixed-phase system
represented by cake filtration with a filter cloth. The analysis has proven suitable for operating modes employing both constant applied pressure
and constant feed flow rate. The design
procedure uses small-scale experiments to determine a
governing permeability function, which has a reproducible, characteristic dependence on the collected volume of filtrate with parametric dependence on the
properties of the solids, liquid and filter cloth. The experimental method and various lab-scale
test filters will be described, and the utility of this method will be
demonstrated for a few common, large-scale applications in chemical
processing. These include the removal of polymer fines from
wastewater, the deliquoring of biomass from a concentrated
sediment of fermentation broth, and the isolation and washing of micron-sized
solids used to manufacture energy materials.
See more of this Group/Topical: Separations Division