Separation processes, importance

Find out more about the production of a common breakfast food or drink product such as margarine, sugar, instant coffee or cornflakes, and list the separation processes important to its production. 

Flotation. Flotation is a gravity separation process which exploits differences in the surface properties of particles. Gas bubbles are generated in a liquid and become attached to solid particles or immiscible liquid droplets, causing the particles or droplets to rise to the surface. This is used to separate mixtures of solid-solid particles and liquid-liquid mixtures of finely divided immiscible droplets. It is an important technique in mineral processing, where it is used to separate different types of ore. 

Rectification is of the greatest industrial importance in particular, it is the principal separation process employed in the petroleum industry. 

Industrial scale polymer forming operations are usually based on the combination of various types of individual processes. Therefore in the computer-aided design of these operations a section-by-section approach can be adopted, in which each section of a larger process is modelled separately. An important requirement in this approach is the imposition of realistic boundary conditions at the limits of the sub-sections of a complicated process. The division of a complex operation into simpler sections should therefore be based on a systematic procedure that can provide the necessary boundary conditions at the limits of its sub-processes. A rational method for the identification of the subprocesses of common types of polymer forming operations is described by Tadmor and Gogos (1979). 

Foams have a wide variety of appHcations that exploit their different physical properties. The low density, or high volume fraction of gas, enable foams to float on top of other fluids and to fiU large volumes with relatively Httle fluid material. These features are of particular importance in their use for fire fighting. The very high internal surface area of foams makes them useful in many separation processes. The unique rheology of foams also results in a wide variety of uses, as a foam can behave as a soHd, while stiH being able to flow once its yield stress is exceeded. 

A development in the 1960s was that of on-line elemental analysis of slurries using x-ray fluorescence. These have become the industry standard. Both in-stream probes and centralized analyzers are available. The latter is used in large-scale operations. The success of the analyzer depends on how representative the sample is and how accurate the caUbration standards are. Neutron activation analyzers are also available (45,51). These are especially suitable for light element analysis. On-stream analyzers are used extensively in base metal flotation plants as well as in coal plants for ash analysis. Although elemental analysis provides important data, it does not provide information on mineral composition which is most cmcial for all separation processes. Devices that can give mineral composition are under development. 

Products. In all of the instances in which crystallization is used to carry out a specific function, product requirements are a central component in determining the ultimate success of the process. These requirements grow out of how the product is to be used and the processing steps between crystallization and recovery of the final product. Key determinants of product quaHty are the size distribution (including mean and spread), the morphology (including habit or shape and form), and purity. Of these, only the last is important with other separation processes. 

Transfer of material between phases is important in most separation processes in which two phases are involved. When one phase is pure, mass transfer in the pure phase is not involved. For example, when a pure liqmd is being evaporated into a gas, only the gas-phase mass transfer need be calculated. Occasionally, mass transfer in one of the two phases may be neglec ted even though pure components are not involved. This will be the case when the resistance to mass transfer is much larger in one phase than in the other. Understanding the nature and magnitudes of these resistances is one of the keys to performing reliable mass transfer. In this section, mass transfer between gas and liquid phases will be discussed. The principles are easily applied to the other phases. 

Any difference in physical properties of the individual solids can be used as the basis for separation. Differences in density size, shape, color, and electrical and magnetic properties are used in successful commercial separation processes. An important factor in determining the techniques that can be prac tically applied is the particle-size range of the mixture. A convenient guide to the application of different solid-solid separation techniques in relation to the particle-size range is presented in Fig. 19-1, which is a modification of an original illustration by Roberts et al. 

This section describes the use of separation processes which utilize membranes. Placement in this chapter is in recognition of the recent ascendency of industrial-scale rnernbrane-based separations, but it also reflects the iew that within a decade, many of these separation processes will be mainstream unit operations. Some approach that status already. Figure 22-46 shows the relath e size of things important in membrane separations. 

When investigating the suitability of a particular resin-bound separations process, the following factors are often important (i) resin consumption (ii) solvent usage (iii) productivity-chemical, optical and volume yields (iv) total number of separations steps and (v) capital costs. For any particular process, these factors differ in their relative importance. However, when evaluating a new separations method it is useful to examine each of these factors. The nonchromatographic separation method... 

The important physical separation processes, discussed here, are distillation, absorption, adsorption, and solvent extraction. 

First, it is important to note that complete fluorination of the elements ensures an effective separation process. Particularly, Maiorov and Nikolaev [477] developed and reported on the conversion of tantalum, niobium and titanium sulfates and chlorides into their respective fluorides. It was shown that such conversion leads to significant improvement in/enhancement of the separation of the elements. 

Since industrial separation processes operate in the Li L2 region, it is important to determine how the Margules parameters affect the shape of the coexistence curve and the slope of the tie lines. For any liquid-liquid region to exist, at least one of the binary Margules constants must be greater than 2RT(on y positive values are considered here) this is a consequence of the... 

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