Extraction staged contactor

A single-stage extraction using the same total volume of solvent achieves only 92% extraction, and the extract concentration is only 0.23, vs. nearly 0.25 for the cross-flow extraction. The use of four cross-flow extraction stages is clearly preferable to a single extraction. Equally, of course, the use of more than four extraction stages, each with a proportionately smaller volume, would improve the performance. In the limit, one would seek a differential contacting process similar to the Soxhlet extractor employed for extraction from solid phases, but such a contactor has not found use in solvent extraction. 

Although the most useful extraction process is with countercurrent flow in a multistage battery, other modes have some application. Calculations may be performed analytically or graphically. On flowsketches like those of Example 14.1 and elsewhere, a single box represents an extraction stage that may be made up of an individual mixer and separator. The performance of differential contactors such as packed or spray towers is commonly described as the height equivalent to a theoretical stage (HETS) in ft or m. 

The centrifugal contactor was first used to reprocess spent nuclear fuel at the SRS in 1966 (Webster et al., 1969). For almost 40 years, this 18-stage 25-cm SRL contactor was used for the extraction and scrub sections (the A-bank) of the PUREX (plutonium-uranium extraction) process at the SRS. Contactor operation stopped when the facility in which they were housed was shut down in 2003. This 18-stage contactor replaced a 24-stage mixer-settler. Mixer-settlers continued to be used for the rest of the processing, as most of the radiation was removed in the A-bank. The ability to... 

The transfer of mass from one phase to another is involved in the operations of distillation, absorption, extraction, humidification, adsorption, drying, and crystallization. The principal function of the equipment used for these operations is to permit efficient contact between the phases. Many special types of equipment have been developed that are particularly applicable for use with a given operation, but finite-stage contactors and continuous contactors are the types most commonly encountered. A major part of this chapter, therefore, is devoted to the design aspects and costs of stagewise plate contactors and continuous packed contactors. 

Countercurrent extraction (Fig. 15-5) is an extraction scheme in which the extraction solvent enters the stage or end of the extraction farthest from where the feed F enters and the two phases pass coun-tercurrently to each other. The objective is to transfer one or more components from the feed solution F into the extract E. When a staged contactor is used, the two phases are mixed with droplets of one phase suspended in the other, but the phases are separated before leaving each stage. When a differential contactor is used, one of the phases can remain dispersed as droplets throughout the contactor as the phases pass countercurrently to each other. The dispersed phase is then allowed to coalesce at the end of the device before being discharged. 

Separation operations are interphase mass transfer processes because they involve the creation, by the addition of heat as in distillation or of a mass separation agent as in absorption or extraction, of a second phase, and the subsequent selective separation of chemical components in what was originally a one-phase mixture by mass transfer to the newly created phase. The thermodynamic basis for the design of equilibrium staged equipment such as distillation and extraction columns are introduced in this chapter. Various flow arrangements for multiphase, staged contactors are considered. 

Phenol Process (4, 37A, 154, 155, 156). Phenol is used at a sufficiently high temperature (= 200 F.) to permit treatment of oils of high viscosity and wax content. Early installations used separate stage contactors, but modern plants have packed or perforated-plate countercurrent towers. The solvent is used either substantially dry or with water injection into the extract end of the extractor to reduce oil solubility and induce extract reflux. The latter is used in the newer plants, according to the flowsheet of Fig. 11.17. 

The main objective for calculating the number of theoretical stages (or mass-transfer units) in the design of a hquid-liquid extraction process is to evaluate the compromise between the size of the equipment, or number of contactors required, and the ratio of extraction solvent to feed flow rates required to achieve the desired transfer of mass from one phase to the other. In any mass-transfer process there can be an infinite number of combinations of flow rates, number of stages, and degrees of solute transfer. The optimum is governed by economic considerations. 

A wide variety of extraction column forms are used in solvent extraction applications and many of these, such as rotary-disc contactors (RDC), Oldshue-Rushton columns, and sieve-plate column extractors, have rather distinct compartments and a geometry, which lends itself to an analysis of column performance in terms of a stagewise model. As the compositions of the phases do not come to equilibrium at any stage, however, the behaviour of the column is therefore basically differential in nature. 

Stage-wise extractors, in which the liquids are alternately contacted (mixed) and then separated, in a series of stages. The mixer-settler contactor, is an example of this type. Several mixer-settlers are often used in series to increase the effectiveness of the extraction. 

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