Permeability filter media

Use of filter aids is a technique frequently applied for filtrations in which problems of slow filtration rate, rapid medium blinding, or un-satisfactoiy filtrate clarity arise. Filter aids are granular or fibrous solids capable of forming a highly permeable filter cake in which veiy fine solids or slimy, deformable floes may be trapped. Application of filter aids may allow the use of a much more permeable filter medium than the clarification would require to produce filtrate of the same quahty by depth filtration. 

Addition of Inert Filter Aids. FUtet aids ate rigid, porous, and highly permeable powders added to feed suspensions to extend the appheabUity of surface filtration. Very dilute or very fine and slimy suspensions ate too difficult to filter by cake filtration due to fast pressure build-up and medium blinding addition of filter aids can alleviate such problems. Filter aids can be used in either or both of two modes of operation, ie, to form a precoat which then acts as a filter medium on a coarse support material called a septum, or to be mixed with the feed suspension as body feed to increase the permeabihty of the resulting cake. 

An additional benefit of prethickening is reduction in cake resistance. If the feed concentration is low, there is a general tendency of particles to pack together more tightly, thus leading to higher specific resistances. If, however, many particles approach the filter medium at the same time, they may bridge over the pores this reduces penetration into the cloth or the cake underneath and more permeable cakes are thus formed. 

Filter-medium selection embraces many types of construction fabrics of woven fibers, felts, and nonwoven fibers, porous or sintered solids, polymer membranes, or particulate solids in the form of a permeable bed. Media of all types are available in a wide choice of materials. 

For incompressible cake, the pressure distribution and the rate depend on the resistance of the filter medium and the permeability of the cake. Figure L8-150 shows several possible pressure profiles in the cake with increasing filtration rates through the cake. It is assumed that r /i i = 0.8 and /p//i = 0.6. The pressure at / = ri, corresponds to pressure drop across the filter medium Ap, with the ambient pressure taken to be zero. The filtration rate as well as the pressure distribution depend on the medium resistance and that of the cake. High medium resistance or blinding of the medium results in greater penalty on filtration rate. 

Filter aids as well as flocculants are employed to improve the filtration characteristics of hard-to-filter suspensions. A filter aid is a finely divided solid material, consisting of hard, strong particles that are, en masse, incompressible. The most common filter aids are applied as an admix to the suspension. These include diatomaceous earth, expanded perlite, Solkafloc, fly ash, or carbon. Filter aids build up a porous, permeable, and rigid lattice structure that retains solid particles and allows the liquid to pass through. These materials are applied in small quantities in clarification or in cases where compressible solids have the potential to foul the filter medium. 

The permeability relative to a pure liquid, usually water, may be determined with the help of different devices that operate on the principle of measurement of filtrate volume obtained over a definite time interval at known pressure drop and filtration area. The permeability is usually expressed in terms of the hydraulic resistance of the filter medium. This value is found from ... 

In principle, filter bed permeabilities can be calculated using the Carman-Kozeny equation 2.53. For slurries containing irregular particles, however, cake filtrabilities together with filter medium resistance are determined using the Leaf Test (Figure 4.13). In this technique, a sample of suspended slurry is drawn through a sample test filter leaf at a fixed pressure drop and the transient volumetric flowrate of clear filtrate collected determined. 

A schematic of the flow through the cake and filter medium is shown in Fig. 13-6. The slurry flow rate is Q, and the total volume of filtrate that passes through the filter is V. The flow through the cake and filter medium is inevitably laminar, so the resistance can be described by Darcy s law and the permeability of the medium (K) ... 

Results from constant differential pressure filtration tests have been analyzed according to traditional filtration science techniques with some modifications to account for the cross-flow filter arrangement.11 Resistivity of the filter medium may vary over time due to the infiltration of the ultrafine catalyst particles within the media matrix. Flow resistance through the filter cake can be measured and correlated to changes in the activation procedure and to the chemical and physical properties of the catalyst particles. The clean medium permeability must be determined before the slurries are filtered. The general filtration equation or the Darcy equation for the clean medium is defined as... 

When a slurry flows through a filter, the solid particles become entrapped by the filter medium which is permeable only to the liquid. Either of two mechanisms are used cake filtration or depth filtration. 

The value of the permeability coefficient is frequently used to give an indication of the ease with which a fluid will flow through a bed of particles or a filter medium. Some values of B for various packings, taken from Eisenklam(2), are shown in Table 4.1, and it can be seen that B can vary over a wide range of values. It should be noted that these values of B apply only to the laminar flow regime. 

Cross-flow filters behave in a way similar to that normally observed in crossflow filtration under ambient conditions increased shear-rates and reduced fluid-viscosity result in an increased filtrate number. Cross-microfiltration has been applied to the separation of precipitated salts as solids, giving particle-separation efficiencies typically exceeding 99.9%. Goemans et al. [30] studied sodium nitrate separation from supercritical water. Under the conditions of the study, sodium nitrate was present as the molten salt and was capable of crossing the filter. Separation efficiencies were obtained that varied with temperature, since the solubility decreases as the temperature increases, ranging between 40% and 85%, for 400 °C and 470°C, respectively. These workers explained the separation mechanism as a consequence of a distinct permeability of the filtering medium towards the supercritical solution, as opposed to the molten salt, based on their clearly distinct viscosities. 

Filter Medium The permeable material that separates particles from a fluid passing through it. 

Permeability The property of the filter medium that permits a fluid to pass through under the influence of a pressure differential. 

Various types of filter media and the materials of which they are constructed are surveyed extensively by Purchas Industrial Filtration of Liquids, CRC Press, Cleveland, 1967, chap. 3), and characterizing measurements (e g-, pore size, permeability) are reviewed in detail by Rushton and Griffiths (in Orr, op. cit., chap. 3). Briefer summaries of classification of media and of practical criteria for the selection of a filter medium are presented by Shoemaker (op. cit., p. 26) and Purchas [Filtr Sep., 17, 253, 372 (1980)]. 

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