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Solid-Liquid Separation Equipment Selection and Elimination Procedure

In order to make the equipment selection you will have to respond to some questions about your process and the material to be filtered or separated. One of the most important questions is: how easy are the solids to filter? Two separate methods are provided for this: the first method uses simple settling velocity to try and provide some idea of how easy to filter the material will be. You may be able to perform a simple sedimentation to determine this and use the result here. Alternatively, if you know the particle size use the Settling Calculations link at the bottom of the page to calculate the settling velocity.
The other alternative provided requires more detailed information about the filter cake. This could come from a laboratory filter test, be deduced from an existing process or be looked up from a table. A look up table is included in the link under Data Analysis at the bottom of this page.

Option to select method for equipment selection

EITHER

use the selection procedure based on settling velocity OR

use the selection procedure based on filter cake specific resistance

Acknowledgement
The selection is based on a paper in Chemical Engineering Progress, by Michael Ernst, R.M. Talcott, H.C. Romans and G.R.S. Smith, 1991, pages 22 to 28. The original article used the settling velocity method - the rating system here is an amended version from the original.

Cutting fluids
If your interest is in specifying filtration for machine coolants and cutting fluids a useful booklet by Ken Doenges is available. To see an exert from it - click here.

Request
The equipment database has been expanded from the original publication and can be easily up-dated further. Please use the enquiry form if you would like to add equipment. Click here to see the current contents of the database.