Separation Equipment and Filtration Equipment, Liquid-Solid
Separation equipment and filtration equipment for liquid-solid materials are used to filter, thicken or clarify a mixture of different elements.. Examples of liquid-solid separation equipment and filtration equipment types include sedimentation equipment, gravity filtration equipment, vacuum filtration equipment, pressure filtration equipment, thickeners, clarifiers, and centrifugal separators. Sedimentation is a gravitational or chemical process that causes particles to settle to the bottom. Sedimentation equipment includes gravity sedimentation filters and flocculation systems.
Gravity filtration uses the hydrostatic pressure of the prefilter column above the filter surface to generate the flow of the filtrate. Gravity separation equipment and filtration equipment includes bag filters, gravity nutsches and sand filters.
Vacuum filters are available in batch (vacuum nutsches and vacuum leaf filters) and continuous (drum filters, disk filters and horizontal filters) operating cycles. Continuous vacuum filters are widely used in the process industry. The three main classes of continuous vacuum filters are drum, disk, and horizontal filters. All of these vacuum filters have the following common features:
- A filtering surface that moves from a point where a cake is deposited under a vacuum to a point of solids removal, where the cake is discharged through mechanical or pneumatic means, and then back to the point of slurry application.
- A valve to regulate pressure below the surface.
- An apparently continuous operating cycle that is actually a series of closely spaced batch cycles.
Vacuum Separation equipment and filtration equipment for liquid-solids includes disc filters, horizontal belt filters, rotary drum filters (including precoat varieties), table filters, tilting pan filters, tray filters, and vacuum nutsche filters.
Pressure filters operate at superatmospheric pressures at the filtering surface. The media is fed to the machine by diaphragm, plunger, screw and centrifugal pumps, blowcases and streams from pressure reactors. Most pressure filters are batch, or semi-continuous, machines. Rotary drum pressure filters and some others have continuous operating cycles. Continuous machines are more expensive and less flexible than batch machines. Pressure Separation equipment and filtration equipment includes automatic pressure filters, candle filters, filterpresses, horizontal plate pressure filters, nutsche pressure filters and vertical pressure leaf filters.
Thickeners are used to separate solids from liquids by means of gravity sedimentation. Most thickeners are larger, continuous operation pieces of equipment. They are used for heavy-duty applications such as coal, iron ore taconites, copper pyrite, phosphates and other beneficiation processes. Common thickener types include conventional thickeners, high rate thickeners, lamella thickeners and tray thickeners.
The primary end product of clarifiers is a clarified liquid. They are virtually identical in design to thickeners, but have a lighter duty drive mechanism. They are generally used for industrial and residential waste. Clarifying separation equipment and filtration equipment includes conventional clarifiers, reverse osmosis equipment, sludge-blanket clarifiers and suction clarifiers.
