Operating sedimentation/filtration

Removal of insoluble particulates using various separation techniques. Common operations are filtration, centrifugation and/or settling/sedimentation/decanting. 

Conventional treatment, which includes coagulation, flocculation, clarification (sedimentation or flotation), and filtration, along with disinfection, can achieve 99.9% inactivation of Giardia cysts and 99.99% inactivation of enteric viruses when properly designed and operated. Direct filtration, slow sand filtration, and diatomaceous earth filtration systems, each combined with disinfection, have also achieved these reductions. 

Particle size, shape, inter-particle forces, zeta potential, liquid surfactant phenomena, and liquid viscosity are important characteristics of a solid-liquid suspending system. Mechanism of flow through porous medium is fundamental to theories of sedimentation, filtration, centrifugation, and expression operations. Most solid-liquid materials are compacti-ble. Unique and strange behavior of pressure filtration of compactible materials has been identified. More attention should be paid for separation of those materials. 

As the casting process is an operation of filtration with formation of deposit, its kinetics is generally evaluated nsing Darcy s law [TIL 86]. By considering that rheological properties of the suspension remain constant during filtration, that there is no sedimentation and that the deposit is incompressible, its thickness e can then be... 

The trend in the use of deep bed filters in water treatment is to eliminate conventional flocculators and sedimentation tanks, and to employ the filter as a flocculation reactor for direct filtration of low turbidity waters. The constraints of batch operation can be removed by using one of the available continuous filters which provide continuous backwashing of a portion of the medium. Such systems include moving bed filters, radial flow filters, or traveling backwash filters. Further development of continuous deep bed filters is likely. Besides clarification of Hquids, which is the most frequent use, deep bed filters can also be used to concentrate soflds into a much smaller volume of backwash, or even to wash the soflds by using a different Hquid for the backwash. Deep bed filtration has a much more limited use in the chemical industry than cake filtration (see Water, Industrial water treatment Water, Municipal WATERTREATiffiNT Water Water, pollution and Water, reuse). 

Modem practice is to maintain the white water system as closed as possible, ie, as much water as is compatible with efficient machine operation is recycled. The loss of fibers and inert furnish components, particularly clay, has been gready reduced. Eiber losses, however, stiU occur into the white water, and greater economy of operation may be achieved if these fibers could be recovered. Thus, it is common to design a fiber-recovery system into the white water cycle. The three general types of save-all fiber recovery are based on filtration (qv), dotation (qv), and sedimentation (qv). If these are operated efficiendy, the net fiber loss can be less than 1%. 

Tim LarOS/ M.S./ Mineral Processing, Senior Proce.ss Consultant, El MCO Proce.ss Equipment Co. Member, Society of Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration (SME of AIME). (Gravity Sedimentation Operations Filtration)... 

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,... 

These operations may sometimes be better kno Ti as mist entrainment, decantation, dust collection, filtration, centrifugation, sedimentation, screening, classification, scrubbing, etc. They often involve handling relatively large quantities of one phase in order to collect or separate the other. Therefore the size of the equipment may become very large. For the sake of space and cost it is important that the equipment be specified and rated to Operate as efficiently as possible [9]. This subject will be limited here to the removal or separation of liquid or solid particles from a vapor or gas carrier stream (1. and 3. above) or separation of solid particles from a liquid (item 4j. Reference [56] is a helpful review. 

In this treatment process, unit operations such as chemical coagulation, flocculation, and sedimentation followed by filtration, activated carbon, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis are employed to remove significant amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, heavy metals, organic matters, bacteria, and viruses present in wastewater.2 It is always the last process step in the wastewater treatment plant that finally renders the treated wastewater reusable and disposable into the environment without any adverse effect (Figure 22.1). 

The basic unit operations/processes required for treating the acid pickling wastewater are (a) neutralization with NaOH and/or lime to increase the pH and (b) physicochemical methods, such as chemical coagulation, precipitation, clarification (sedimentation or DAF), and filtration to remove BOD5, COD, and iron. 

In natural waters and soil and sediment systems one needs to distinguish analytically between dissolved and particulate material. Fig. 7.1 classifies various types of particulate and dissolved materials. Obviously, operational distinguishing (e.g., based on filtration or centrifugation) between "dissolved" and "particulate" matter merely by filtration is often not able to discriminate between particles and solutes, because size distribution of aquatic components vary in a continuous matter from Angstroms to microns. 

E. Particle size effects on sedimentation and filtration operations... 

The dramatic changes in haze particle size seen with alterations in protein-to-polyphenol ratio in a model system, would, if this also occurs in real beverages, have profound effects on both sedimentation (e.g., cold maturation in a tank or centrifugation) and filtration operations. 

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