Heterogeneous separations thickener

When the Elements, corporified by their union, take the form of Saltpetre, or Tartar, and of Vitriol, the Fire of Nature, excited by solar heat, digests the humidity which the dryness of these salts attracts, and separating the pure from the impure, the Salt from the Earth, the homogeneous parts from the heterogeneous, it thickens the mineral sperm into quicksilver, then into a metal pure or impure, according to the mixture and to the quality of the matrix. 

There are a large number of processes in the chemical industries that handle a variety of suspensions of solid particles in liquids. The application of filtration techniques for the separation of these heterogeneous systems is sometimes very costly. If, however, the discrete phase of the suspension largely contains settleable particles, the separation can be effected by the operation of sedimentation. The process of sedimentation involves the removal of suspended solid particles from a liquid stream by gravitational settling. This unit operation is divided into thickening,... 

Various parameters of speed determine whether a mixture may separate or continue to flow. In fact, the designer of a thickener or a mixer is often more interested in the sinking velocity of particles. On the other hand, the designer of a pipeline has to pay attention to the critical velocity of flow, setding speed, and whether the flow is vertical or horizontal, particularly in the case of heterogeneous flows. 

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