Centrifugal contactors design

Leonard, R. A. 1988. Recent Advances in Centrifugal Contactor Design. Sep. Sci. Technol. 23, 1473-1487. 

Countercurrent contactors, design of, 10 757 Countercurrent continuous centrifugal extractor, 10 781... 

The types of equipment used, which range from stirred tanks and mixer-settlers to centrifugal contactors and various types of columns, affect both capital and operating costs [9]. In the decision to build a plant, the choice of the most suitable contactor for the specific situation is most important. In some systems, because of the chemistry and mass transfer rates involved, several alternative designs of contacting equipment are available. In the selection of a contactor, one must consider the capacity and stage requirements solvent type and residence time phase flow ratio physical properties direction of mass transfer phase dispersion and coalescence holdup kinetics equilibrium presence of solids overall performance and maintenance as a function of contactor complexity. This may appear very complicated, but with some experience, the choice is relatively simple. 

Meikrantz, D.H., Law, J., Todd, T. 2007. Design attributes and scale up testing of annular centrifugal contactors. Chemical Engineering Division of the AIChE Spring National Meeting, April 10-14, 2005, Atlanta, GA. INL/CON-05-00088. 

Design Principles and Applications of Centrifugal Contactors for Solvent Extraction... 

In this chapter, Section 10.2 gives an overview of the operation of the Argonne centrifugal contactor. Section 10.3 focuses on the design principles for this contactor. Section 10.4 discusses the worldwide applications of this contactor to solvent-extraction processes of interest to the nuclear and other industries. Comparisons with other types of contactors are made throughout the text, and a separate section is devoted to them in Section 10.4. However, because of their widespread use and the author s particular experience with them, the ANL contactor and its variations remain the primary focus. 

The annular centrifugal contactor is designed so that each stage achieves the required mixing and subsequent separation. Besides the conditions specified above, at least five additional factors must be considered. First, to allow the dispersion to flow by gravity from the mixing zone into the rotor, stationary radial vanes under the rotor must dissipate the rotational velocity of the dispersion. Second, the rotor inlet (RI) must be small... 

A solvent-extraction flowsheet is broken down into sections such as extraction, scrub, and strip. For each section, one or more component in a process fluid must be moved from one phase to the other phase with a specified degree of completeness. The first design problem is to determine the number of stages for each section to accomplish the required component transfer. With the well-defined stages of the centrifugal contactor, the following extraction factor (E) can be used to estimate the number of stages required ... 

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