In a Nutshell

Importance of Screening in the Chemical Engineering Practice

The screening operation holds such importance within the chemical engineering
practice because it is one of the only few unit operations that are designed to separate a
fraction of solid of another size from a solid mixture. Particle size is a central theme in
solid-solid separations in which it almost always becomes the determining factor in the
energy required, equipment and cost of the separation process. Thus, whenever an
industry requires a solid particulate product to have a certain size to be in the market,
screening becomes the necessary unit operation to achieve this.
Dry Screening vs. Wet Screening
In fact, there are two types of screening commonly utilized in the industry: dry
and wet screening. On one hand, dry screening is the conventional type of screening in
which the solids that are to be separated only contain the minimum amount of moisture.
The moisture content that is being handled by a dry screening operation both has an
upside and a downside. Its upside is that this type of screening only requires the
minimum amount of cost to successfully operate it. The downside would be that it often
causes clogging or “blinding” of the screen since particles would sometimes plug the
screen openings and would definitely impede the effectiveness of the screening
operation.
On the other hand, wet screening is designed to resolve the problem often
encountered by industries which utilize dry screening. This type of screening introduces
water flow to remove any particles that is clogging the screen openings. However, the
downside of conducting wet screening is that it is much more expensive to operate
compared to dry screening since it operates with additional equipment related to water
flow and of course, energy requirements also go up.
Screen Analysis
Screening also facilitates screen analysis. Screen analysis is conducted
whenever the particle sizes and their distribution are of particular interest. Since screen
analysis is widely used not just in chemical and processing industries, but also in any
field that has interests in particulate solids such as soil research, screen aperture (size)
has been standardized. The screen standards that are most used all over the globe are
the Tyler Standard Sieve Series, United States Sieve Series and the International Test
Sieve Series.
The results from a screen analysis are often plotted in two different variations of
a histogram. One way of plotting screen analysis results is to do a differential plot where
the solid fractions are plotted against its average sizes. This method is called the
differential analysis. Another way of plotting screen analysis results is to do a
cumulative analysis where the solid fractions are plotted against a cumulative solid
mass fraction. Typically, a cumulative analysis provides much more accuracy than a
differential analysis. However, their accuracy varies only little that the use of differential
analysis is always permitted.

Image 1. Screen Analysis

In chemical and processing industries, or any industry that involves screening, it
is always needed to measure the effectiveness and capacity of the screening operation.
This is because these two factors are required to be known to fully optimize a screening
operation. Contrastingly, effectiveness and capacity sit at polar ends. Meaning,
effectiveness can only be increased at the expense of the screens’ capacity. Also, when
an industry focuses on the screens’ capacity, their screens’ effectiveness drops.
Numerically, effectiveness is calculated by the following equation.

Also, capacity is calculated by the following.