Thickening of Clay Slurries by Periodic Pressure Flow Through a Porous Polypropylene Tube
Abstract
In this work a periodic pressure filtration process is evaluated to determine (1) if the process can be used to thicken clay slurries, and (2) to obtain an order of magnitude cost estimate of the process for comparison with other thickening processes. Current environmental clean-up operations, such as soil washing, result in large volumes of dilute slurries that must be filtered to remove the particles. The soil particles collected during the filtration, if clean, can be returned to the ground. One step in the dewatering and filtering process is thickening the slurry before filtering. The periodic pressure filtration process is one possible process for thickening clay slurries but no performance data is available for evaluating the process. In this work a one-tube periodic pressure filter process is evaluated by measuring the thickened slurry discharge and filtrate rate while varying the design and operating parameters. The experimental results show that the process does thicken the slurries of 1 to 3% inlet mass concentration to about 30 to 40% mass concentration. Using this performance data the cost estimate shows that scale-up of the process to a bank of tubes would be much more expensive than the cost of a typical gravity thickener. Hence, the periodic pressure filter should only be used for materials that do not settle well or if the size of the gravity thickener is excessively large.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA462709
Entities
People
- George G. Chase
- Sesh K. Kodavanti
Organizations
- University of Akron