MECHANICAL SEPERATION OF SOLID PARTICLES

Separations are extremely important in chemical manufacture. Much processing equipment

is devoted to separating one phase or one material from another. Separations are divided
into two classes.

i) diffusional operations, involves the transfer of material between phases

ii) mechanical separations,

Mechanical separations are applicable to heterogeneous mixtures, not to homogeneous

solutions. The techniques are based on physical differences between the particles such as
size, shape, or density. They are applicable to separating solids from gases, liquid drops
from gases, solids from solids, and solids from liquids. Two general methods are the use of
a sieve, septum, or membrane, such as a screen or a filter, which retains one component
and allows the other to pass; and the utilization of differences in the rate of sedimentation
of particles or drops as they move through a liquid or gas.

1. SCREENING

Screening is a method of separating particles according to size alone. In industrial

screening the solids are dropped on, or thrown against, a screening surface. The undersize,
or fines, pass through the screen openings; oversize, or tails, do not. A single screen can
make but a single separation into two fractions. These are called unsized fractions, because
although either the upper or lower limit of the particle sizes they contain is known, the
other limit is unknown. Material passed through a series of screens of different sizes is
separated into sized fractions, i.e., fractions in which both the maximum and minimum
particle sizes are known. Screening is occasionally done wet but much more commonly dry.

Industrial screens are made from woven wire, silk or plastic cloth, metal bars, perforated or
slotted metal plates, or wires that are wedge shaped in cross section. Various metals are
used, with steel and stainless steel the most common.

Standard screens range in mesh size from 4 in. to 400-mesh, and woven metal screens with
openings as small as 1 µm are commercially available. Screens finer than about 150-mesh

1|P ag e
are not commonly used, however, because with very fine particles other methods of
separation are usually more economical.

Screening Equipment

Many varieties of screens are available for different purposes. In most screens the particles
drop through the openings by gravity; in a few designs they are pushed through the screen
by a brush or centrifugal force. Coarse particles drop easily through large openings in a
stationary surface, but with fine particles the screen surface must be agitated in some way,
such as by shaking, gyrating, or vibrating it mechanically or electrically. Typical screen
motions are illustrated in Figure 1 below;

Figure 1: Motions of screens:

(a) gyrations in horizontal plane; (b) gyrations in vertical plane; (c) gyrations at one end,
shaking at other; (d) shaking; (e) mechanically vibrated; (f)electrically vibrated.

Stationary Screens and Grizzlies.

A grizzly is a grid of parallel metal bars set in an inclined stationary frame. The slope and
the path of the material are usually parallel to the length of the bars. Very coarse feed, as
from a primary crusher, falls on the upper end of the grid. Large chunks roll and slide to the

2|P ag e
tails' discharge; small lumps fall through to a separate collector. In cross section the top of
each bar is wider than the bottom, so that the bars can be made fairly deep for strength
without being choked by lumps passing partway through. The spacing between the bars is
50 to 200 mm. Stationary inclined woven-metal screens operate in the same way,
separating particles 12 to 100 mm in size. They are effective only with very coarse free-
flowing solids containin g few fine particles.

Gyrating Screens.

A heavy-duty gyrating screen is illustrated in Figure 2. Two screens, one above the other,
are held in a casing inclined at an angle between 16° and 30° with the horizontal. The feed
mixture is dropped on the upper screen near its highest point. Casing and screens are
gyrated in a vertical plane about a horizontal axis by an eccentric that is set halfway
between the feed point and the discharge. The rate of gyration is between 600 and 1800
rev/min. The screens are rectangular and fairly long, typically 0.5 to 1.2 m to 1.5 to 4.3 m.
Oversize particles fall from the lower ends of the screens into collecting ducts; fines pass
through the bottom screen into a discharge chute.

Finer screens are usually gyrated at the feed end in a horizontal plane. The discharge end
reciprocates but does not gyrate. This combination of motions stratifies the feed, so that
fine particles travel downward to the screen surface, where they are pushed through by the
larger particles on top. Often the screening surface is double, and between the two screens
are rubber balls held in separate compartments. As the screen operates, the balls strike the
screen surface and free the openings of any material that tends to plug them. Dry, hard,
rounded or cubical grains ordinarily pass without trouble through screens, even fine
screens; but elongated, sticky, flaky, or soft particles do not. Under the screening action
such particles may become wedged into the openings and prevent other particles from
passing through. A screen plugged with solid particles is said to be blinded.

3|P ag e
Figure 2

(a) Heavy-duty vertically gyrated screen; (b) Electrically vibrated screen.

Other types of screens

 Vibrating screens
 Centrifugal sifter

4|P ag e
Material balances over screen.

Overflow. XD

Feed, XF

Underflow. XB

Let F, D, and B be the mass flow rates of the feed, overflow, and underflow, respectively,
and xF, xD, and XB be the mass fraction of material A in these three streams. The mass
fractions of material B in the feed, overflow, and underflow are 1 - XF, 1- XD, and 1- X B.

Since the total material fed to the screen must leave it either as underflow or as overflow,
Then,

F=D+B eqn 1

Material A balance yields;

FxF = DxD + BxB eqn 2

Using eqn 1 and 2,

Or eliminating D yields;

Screen Efficiency

This is a measure of the success of a screen in closely separating materials A and B. If the
screen functioned perfectly, all of material A would be in the overflow and all of material B

5|P ag e
would be in the underflow. A common measure of screen effectiveness is the ratio of
oversize material, A that is actually in the overflow to the amount of, A, entering with the
feed. These quantities are DxD and FxF, respectively.

Therefore,

Where EA is the screen effectiveness based on the oversize. Similarly, an effectiveness

EB, based on the undersize materials is given by;

An overall effectiveness, E, defined as the product of the two individual ratios, is given by;

Substituting D/F and B/F yields;

Example

A quartz mixture having the screen analysis shown in Table 1 is screened through a
standard 10-mesh screen. The cumulative screen analysis of overflow and underflow are
given in the Table. Calculate the mass ratios of the overflow and underflow to feed and the
overall effectiveness of the screen.

6|P ag e
Table 1

From the table,

Therefore the ratio of the overflow feed is given by,

And the ratio of underflow feed is,

The overall effectiveness is therefore given by,

7|P ag e
SEPARATION OF SOLIDS FROM GASES

Cyclones.

Most centrifugal separators for removing particles from gas streams contain no moving
parts. A typified cyclone separator is shown in Fig. 4. It consists of a vertical cylinder with a
conical bottom, a tangential inlet near the top, and an outlet for dust at the bottom of the
cone. The inlet is usually rectangular. The outlet pipe is extended into the cylinder to
prevent short-circuiting of air from inlet to outlet.

Fig. 4: Cyclone

The incoming dust-laden air travels in a spiral path around and down the cylindrical body
of the cyclone. The centrifugal force developed in the vortex tends to move the particles
radially toward the wall, and the particles that reach the wall slide down into the cone and
are collected. The cyclone is basically a settling device in which a strong centrifugal force,
acting radially, is used in place of a relatively weak gravitational force acting vertically.

The centrifugal force Fc at radius r is given by;

8|P ag e
Where, m, is the mass of the particle and utan is the tangential velocity

The force of gravity, Fg is given by;

The separation factor is given by;

A large-diameter cyclone has a much lower separation factor at the same velocity, and
velocities above 15 to 20 m/s are usually impractical because of the high pressure drop and
increased abrasive wear. Small-diameter cyclones may have separation factors as high as
2500. To handle large gas flows, a number of small-diameter cyclones may be grouped in a
single enclosure with common headers for the feed and product gases and a single dust
hopper.

The dust particles entering a cyclone are accelerated radially, but the force on a particle is
not constant because of the change in r and also because the tangential velocity in the
vortex varies with r and with distance below the inlet. Calculation of particle trajectories is
difficult, and the efficiency of a cyclone is generally predicted from empirical correlations.

For a given air flow rate and inlet velocity, moderate increases in cyclone diameter and
length improve the collection efficiency, because the increase in surface area offsets the
decreased centrifugal force.

The decrease in efficiency with decreasing particle size is actually more gradual than
predicted by simple theories. For small particles, agglomeration affects cyclone efficiency.

The collection efficiency of a cyclone increases with the particle density and decreases as
the gas temperature is increased because of the increase in gas viscosity. The cyclone is one
of the few separation devices that work better at full load than at partial load. Sometimes

9|P ag e
two identical cyclones are used in series to get more complete solids removal, but the
efficiency of the second unit is less than the first, because the feed to the second unit has a
much lower average particle size.

LIQUID-SOLID SEPARATIONS

Hydroclones.

Cyclones are also used for separating solids from liquids, sometimes as thickeners but
much more commonly as classifiers. In this case, they are termed hydrocyclones or
hydroclones. A typical hydrocyclone is shown in Fig 5.

Fig 5: Hydroclones: (a) pattern of flow; (b) shape adapted to the kind of service.

Feed enters tangentially at high velocity near the top. The liquid follows a spiral path near
the vessel wall, forming a strong downward vortex. Large or heavy solid particles separate
to the wall and are pushed downward and out of the cyclone as a slurry or paste. A
variable-discharge orifice controls the consistency of the underflow.

10 | P a g e
Most of the liquid goes back upward in an inner vortex and leaves through the central
discharge pipe, which is known as a vortex finder.

In a hydroclone it is not possible to have both good solids removal and a high underflow
concentration. In thickening operations, with nearly all the solids removed from the
overflow, the underflow concentration must be less than about 12 percent by volume. In
classifying hydroclones the underflow can be more concentrated, up to a maximum of
about 50 percent by volume for slurries of limestone or coal. Figure 5b shows how the
shape of a hydroclone is modified depending on the function of the unit.

The pressure drop ΔP, in a hydroclone varies with the feed rate raised to a power between
2.0 and 3.3. For dilute feeds the cut diameter varies with the 1.5 power of the cyclone
diameter, so for a given pressure drop a small diameter gives better separation than a large
one. Hydroclones are therefore small: they range in diameter from 10 mm to about 1.2 m.
To handle large flows, many small hydroclones are connected in parallel, with as many as
four hundred and eighty 10-mm units manifolded in a single assembly.

Hydroclones find applications in degritting operations in alumina production, removing

carbon in upgrading gypsum for phosphoric acid manufacture, classifying pigments and
crystal magmas, and similar process steps. They have largely replaced mechanical
classifiers in closed-circuit grinding.

They may be used for:

(a) separating particles (suspended in a liquid of lower density) by size or density, or

more generally, by terminal falling velocity;

(b) the removal of suspended solids from a liquid;

(c) Separating immiscible liquids of different densities;

(d) dewatering of suspensions to give a more concentrated product;

(e) breaking down liquid–liquid or gas–liquid dispersions; and

(f) the removal of dissolved gases from liquids.

11 | P a g e