Separations Involving Solid Particles

Heuristic 13 Crystal growth rates are approximatefy the same in all directions, but crystals are never spheres. Crystal growth rates and sizes are controlled by limiting the extent of supersaturation, S = — where C is 

Prior to crystallization, it is common to employ evaporation to concentrate a solution, particularly an aqueous solution of inorganic chemicals. Because of the relatively high cost of evaporating water with its very large heat of vaporization, the following heuristics are useful 

Heuristic 15 Using multiple evaporators (catted effects) in series, the latent heat of evaporation of water is recovered and reused. With a single evaporator, the ratio of the amount of water evaporated to the amount of external steam supplied to cause the evaporation is typically 0.8. For two effects, 

Heuristic 16 When employing multiple effects, the liquid and vapor flows may be in the same or different directions. Use forward feed, where both liquid and vapor flow in the same direction, for a small number of effects, particularly when the liquid feed is hot. Use backward feed, where liquid flows in a direction opposite to vapor flows, for cold feeds and/or a large number of effects. With forward feed, intermediate liquid pumps are not necessary, whereas they are for backward feed. 

Heuristic 17 When crystals are fragile, effective washing is required, and clear 

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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. 

Many engineering operations involve the separation of solid particles from fluids, in which the motion of the particles is a result of a gravitational (or other potential) force. To illustrate this, consider a spherical solid particle with diameter d and density ps, surrounded by a fluid of density p and viscosity /z, which is released and begins to fall (in the x = — z direction) under the influence of gravity. A momentum balance on the particle is simply T,FX = max, where the forces include gravity acting on the solid (T g), the buoyant force due to the fluid (Fb), and the drag exerted by the fluid (FD). The inertial term involves the product of the acceleration (ax = dVx/dt) and the mass (m). The mass that is accelerated includes that of the solid (ms) as well as the virtual mass (m() of the fluid that is displaced by the body as it accelerates. It can be shown that the latter is equal to one-half of the total mass of the displaced fluid, i.e., mf = jms(p/ps). Thus the momentum balance becomes... 

Classification of the separation techniques according to those involving phase change or mass transfer from one phase to another, known as diffusional operations, and those that are useful in the separation of solid particles or drops of a liquid and that are generally based in the application of an external physical force, known as mechanical separations. 

Contact Electrification This form of charging involves the contact and separation of solid-sohd, sohd-hquid, or hquid-liqmd surfaces. Pure gases do not cause charging unless they cany droplets or dust particles. 

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,... 

Many mechanical separations involve the movement of solid particles or liquid drops through a fluid. The fluid may be gas or liquid, and it may be flowing or static. As some assortment of examples mention may be made of the removal of dust and fumes from air or flue gas, the removal of solids from liquid wastes to permit discharge into public domain, and of the recovery of acid mists from an acid plant gaseous wastes. 

Batch filtration. Batch filtration involves the separation of suspended solids from a slurry of associated liquid. The required product could be either the solid particles or the liquid filtrate. In batch filtration, the filter medium presents an initial resistance to the fluid flow that will change as particles are deposited. The driving forces used in batch filtration are2 ... 

Not all colloid systems are stable. The most stable involve solid dispersion media, since movement through a solid host will be slow. Emulsions also tend to be stable think, for example, about a glass of milk, which is more likely to decompose than undergo the destructive process of phase separation. Aerosols are not very stable although a water-based polish generates a liquid-in-air colloid, the particles of liquid soon descend through the air to form a pool of liquid on the table top. Smoke and other solid-in-gas aerosols are never permanent owing to differences in density between air and the dispersed phase. 

Simple sample preparation Samples for TLC separation often involve fewer cleanup steps because every sample is separated on fresh stationary phase, without cross-contamination or carryover. Even strongly absorbed impurities or solid particles in samples are not of much concern. This would be a disaster for HPLC separation, leading to column buildup, decay, and eventually destroying the performance. 

When soil contaminated by organic chemicals has been excavated for aboveground washing, the procedure involves both physical and chemical processes to achieve solid and liquid separation. The first stage involves separation of large particles by... 

The fact that diffusion models describe a number of chemical processes in solid particles is not surprising since in most cases, mass transfer and chemical kinetics phenomena occur simultaneously and it is difficult to separate them [133-135]. Therefore, the overall kinetics of many chemical reactions in soils may often be better described by mass transfer and diffusion-based models than with simple models such as first-order kinetics. This is particularly true for slower chemical reactions in soils where a fast reaction is followed by a much slower reaction (biphasic kinetics), and is often observed in soils for many reactions involving organic and inorganic compounds. 

As we discussed earlier for the solid-liquid separation technique, filtration separates particles by forcing the fluid through a filtering medium on which solids are deposited. The conventional filtration involves the separation of large particles (dp > 10 pm) by using canvas, synthetic fabrics, or glass fiber as filter medium. 

The former usually involves process temperature or isolation. Solids surface characteristics are important in that they control the extent to which an operation is diffusion-limited, i.e., diffusion into and out of the pores of a given solids particle, not through the voids among separate particles. The size of the solids particles, the surface-to-mass ratio, is also important in the evaluation of surface characteristics and the diffusion problem. 

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