Settling gravity

The majority of the process vessels you see in your plant are gravity, vapor-liquid separators. Their main purpose is to settle out droplets of entrained liquid from the upflowing gas. Factors that affect the settling rate of these droplets are 

All these ideas have been put into one equation, called Stokes law. Nothing against Sir Frederick Stokes, but vapor viscosities are almost always so small that they do not affect settling rates. Also, we never know the particle size distribution of the droplets. There is a more fruitful way to look at the settling tendency of droplets of liquid in an upflowing vapor stream, as shown in Fig. 26.1. The method states 

The mass flow, or weight of the vapor flow, per unit of vessel cross-sectional area is 

Allow me now to call this tendency to entrain droplets K2, where K is a derived number, the entrainment coefficient, describing the tendency to entrain droplets of a randomly produced size distribution. We then 

Thousands of experiments have been run in the plant and the laboratory to determine K values for different levels of entrainment. Here are the results  

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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. 

Heterogeneous hydrogenation catalysts can be used in either a supported or an unsupported form. The most common supports are based on alurnina, carbon, and siUca. Supports are usually used with the more expensive metals and serve several purposes. Most importandy, they increase the efficiency of the catalyst based on the weight of metal used and they aid in the recovery of the catalyst, both of which help to keep costs low. When supported catalysts are employed, they can be used as a fixed bed or as a slurry (Uquid phase) or a fluidized bed (vapor phase). In a fixed-bed process, the amine or amine solution flows over the immobile catalyst. This eliminates the need for an elaborate catalyst recovery system and minimizes catalyst loss. When a slurry or fluidized bed is used, the catalyst must be separated from the amine by gravity (settling), filtration, or other means. 

Controlled Stress Viscometer. Most rotational viscometers operate by controlling the rotational speed and, therefore, the shear rate. The shear stress varies uncontrollably as the viscosity changes. Often, before the stmcture is determined by viscosity measurement, it is destroyed by the shearing action. Yield behavior is difficult to measure. In addition, many flow processes, such as flow under gravity, settling, and film leveling, are stress-driven rather than rate-driven. 

Probably more relevant to the chemical industry is the scale-up of thickeners. Thickeners are basically gravity settling tanks that, apart from producing a clear overflow, are designed to have a thick underflow with as Htfle water content as possible. The feed into a thickener is generally more concentrated than the feed into a clarifier, and quite often exhibits zone-settling behavior because of the appHcation of flocculants. 

Again, corresponds to the area of a gravity settling tank capable of the same separation performance as the disk stack defined by the parameters included in equation 15. 

Dilute This is a fully expanded condition in which the solids particles are so widely separated that they exert essentially no influence upon each other. Specifically, the solids phase is so fuUy dispersed in the gas that the den sity of the suspension is essentially that of the gas phase alone (Fig. 12-29). Commonly, this situation exists when the gas velocity at all points in the system exceeds the terminal setthng velocity of the solids and the particles can be lifted and continuously conveyed by the gas however, this is not always true. Gravity settling chambers such as prilling towers and countercurrent-flow spray diy-ers are two exceptions in which gas velocity is insufficient to entrain the sohds completely. 

Separation of Unstable Systems The buoyancy of bubbles suspended in hquid can frequently be depended upon to cause the bubbles to rise to the surface and separate. This is a special case of gravity settling. The mixture is allowed to stand at rest or is moved along a... 

U Length of gravity settling chamber in direction of gas flow m ft ... 

The measured diameters of particles shoiild as nearly as possible represent the effective particle size of a dust as it exists in the gas stream. When significant flocculation exists, it is sometimes possible to use measurement methods based on gravity settling. 

Gravity settling Elevation gradient Flow pattern Nu. Wcn... 

Sedimentation is the partial separation or concentration of suspended solid particles from a liquid by gravity settling. This field may be divided into the functional operations of thickening and clarification. The primaiy purpose of thickening is to increase the concentration of suspended sohds in a feed stream, while that of clarification is to... 

The primary function of a continuous thickener is to concentrate sus-penaed solids by gravity settling so that a steady-state material balance is achieved, solids being withdrawn continuously in the underflow at the rate they are supphed in the feed. Normally, an inventory of pulp is maintained in order to achieve the desired concentration. This volume will vary somewhat as operating conditions change on occasion, this inventoiy can be used for storage of sohds when reed and underflow rates are reduced or temporarily suspended. 

Filtration of suspensions, e.g. in filter presses, rotary vaeuum filters Sedimentation, gravity settling... 

Flyash - Flyashes are finely divided matter generally entrained in flue gases that arise from combustion. Particles range from 1 /im in size on down. This is not within the operational range of gravity settling chambers. Wet... 

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