Filter media washing

With the cake washed and adequately drained (using compressed air as necessary to remove the last traces of liquid), the filter press would be opened from the queen plate inwards, and the cake in each compartment be discharged into a collection trough or screw conveyor below the filter. Once every cake was discharged, and the filter media washed, then the filter would be closed and the cycle repeated. 

Scale-Up on Rate Filtration rates calculated from bench-scale data shouldbe multiplied by a factor of 0.8 for all types of commercial units which do not employ continuous washing of the filter medium and on which there is a possibility of filter-medium bhnding. For those units which employ continuous filter-medium washing, belt-type drum and horizontal units, the scale-up fac tor maybe increased to 0.9. The use of this scale-up fac tor assumes the following ... 

Deep Bed Filters. Deep bed filtration is fundamentally different from cake filtration both in principle and appHcation. The filter medium (Fig. 4) is a deep bed with pore size much greater than the particles it is meant to remove. No cake should form on the face of the medium. Particles penetrate into the medium where they separate due to gravity settling, diffusion, and inertial forces attachment to the medium is due to molecular and electrostatic forces. Sand is the most common medium and multimedia filters also use garnet and anthracite. The filtration process is cycHc, ie, when the bed is full of sohds and the pressure drop across the bed is excessive, the flow is intermpted and solids are backwashed from the bed, sometimes aided by air scouring or wash jets. 

Horizontal belt filters are well suited to either fast or slowly draining soHds, especially where washing requirements are critical. Multistage countercurrent washing can be effectively carried out due to the sharp separation of filtrates available. Horizontal belt vacuum filters are classified according to the method employed to support the filter medium. 

Pressure leaf filters are used to separate much the same lands of slurries as are filter presses and are used much more extensively than filter presses for filter-aid filtrations. They should be seriously considered whenever uniformity of production permits long-time operation under essentially constant filtration conditions, when thorough washing with a minimum of hquor is desired, or when vapors or fumes make closed construction desirable. Under such conditions, if the filter medium does not require frequent changing, they may show a considerable advantage in cycle and labor economy over a filter press, which has a lower initial cost, and advantages of economy and flexibility over continuous vacuum filters, which have a higher first cost. 

Removable-Medium Filters Some drum filters provide for the filter medium to be removed and reapplied as the drum rotates. This feature permits the complete discharge of thin or sticky cake and provides the regenerative washing of the medium to reduce blinding. Higher filtration rates are possible because of the thinner cake and clean medium, but this is compromised by a less pure filtrate than normally produced by a nonremovable medium. 

F1G. 18-123 Cake discharge and medium washing on an EIMCO helt filter. (EIMCO Process Equipment Co.)... 

Internal Rotary-Drum Filters An example of an internal rotary-drum filter is illustrated in Figure 14. The filter medium is contained on the inner periphery. This design is ideal for rapidly settling slurries that do not require a high degree of washing. Tankless filters of this design consist of multiple-compartment drum vacuum filters. 

After a precipitate has been filtered and washed, it must be brought to a constant composition before it can be weighed. The further treatment will depend both upon the nature of the precipitate and upon that of the filtering medium this treatment consists in drying or igniting the precipitate. Which of the latter two terms is employed depends upon the temperature at which the precipitate is heated. There is, however, no definite temperature below or above which the... 

The physical nature of the precipitate must be such that it can be readily separated from the solution by filtration, and can be washed free of soluble impurities. These conditions require that the particles are of such size that they do not pass through the filtering medium, and that the particle size is unaffected (or, at least, not diminished) by the washing process. 

In conclusion, the following experiments on filtration-washing-deliquoring should be performed to produce data (viscosity of liquids, effective solid concentration, specific cake resistance, cake compressibility, etc.) that are necessary to evaluate times of individual steps of filtration at an industrial scale, i.e. to obtain the proper basis for scale-up of filtration processes measure the filtrate volume versus time make marks on your vacuum flask and take down the time when the filtrate level reaches the mark => no more experiments are needed for preliminary evaluations of filtration properties of slurries initially fines pass the filter medium => recirculate them to the slurry,... 

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