Chemical Engineering Program

Faculty of Engineering
Separation Process and NT

Workshop: Leaching and Washing

1. CaCO3 precipitate can be produced by reaction of an aqueous solution of Na 2CO3

and CaO, the by-product being NaOH. Following decantation, slurry leaving the
precipitation tank is 5 wt% CaCO3, 0.1 wt% NaOH, and the balance water. 1000 kg/h
of slurry is fed to a two stage continuous countercurrent washing system to be washed
with 20000 lb/h of water. Underflow from each thickener will contain 20 wt% solids.
Determine % recovery of NaOH in the extract and wt% NaOH in the dried CaCO 3
product. Is it worthwhile to add a third stage.

2. You are working on a new glass factory near the ocean. The sand is to be mined
wet from the beach. However, the wet sand carries with it seawater entrained
between the sand grains. Several studies have shown that 40% vol seawater is
consistently carried with the sand. The seawater is 0.035 wt frac salt, which must be
removed by a washing process.

Densities: water: 1 g/mL, dry sand: 1.8 g/L, dry sand without air: 3 g/mL.
a. We desire a final wet sand product in which the entrained water has 0.002 wt
frac salt. For each 1000 mL of wet sand we will use 0.5 kg of pure wash
water. In a counter current washing process, how many stages are required?
What is the outlet concentration of wash water?
b. In a cross-flow process we wish to use seven stages with 0.2 kg of pure wash
water added to each stage for each 1000 mL of wet sand. What is the outlet
concentration of the water entrained with the sand?

3. You are processing halibut livers that contain approximately 25.2 wt% fish oil and
74.8 wt% insoluble solids. The following data for leaching fish oil from halibut livers
using diethyl ether solvent is given by brown and associates:

yoil 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.65 0.70

z 0.205 0.242 0.283 0.339 0.405 0.489 0.600 0.672 0

Where yoil is the mass fraction oil in the overflow, which was found to contain no
insoluble solids and Z is the pounds of solution per pound of oil free solids in the
underflow.

a. Draw the equilibrium line

b. We have a total of 1000 lb of fish (oil + solids). We mix the fish with 500 lb
of pure diethyl ether, let the mixture settle and draw of the solvent layer.
Calculate the weight fraction of oil in the extract and raffinate layers, and
the amounts of the extract and the raffinate.
c. We have a total of 1000 lb/h of fish (oil+solids)/h, which we are going to
continuously process in a countercurrent cascade of thickeners. Use 500
 Chemical Engineering Program
Faculty of Engineering
Separation Process and NT

lb/h of pure diethyl ether. We want the outlet raffinate to contain 0.02 weight
fraction fish oil. Find the number of stages required.