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The removal of a liquid from slurry by introducing the slurry into a rapidly rotating basket,
where the solids are retained on a porous screen and the liquid is forced out of the cake by the
centrifugal action is called Centrifugal filtration. Centrifugal Filtration tends to be used when
The filtration medium may be of woven screens, fabric, non-woven fabric, paper, or a porous
horizontal plates, as circular or flat cartridges, as a belt, as a rotary drum, or as the wall of a
1. Cake filtration. The solids build up on the surface of the filter medium and form a cake of
steadily increasing thickness. This cake actually becomes the filter. A filter aid (e.g.,
diatomaceous earth) may be added to enhance the filtration. However it must be removed from
2. Cross-flow membrane filtration. The feed is passed through a membrane or bed, where the
solids being trapped in the filter and the filtrate being released at the other end(Hayes K, 2001).
When filtration is carried out in a centrifuge, it is necessary to use perforated bowl to permit
remove of the filtrate. The driving force is the centrifugal pressure due to the liquid and
suspended solids. The resulting force must overcome friction caused by the flow of liquid
through the filter cake, the cloth and the supporting gauze and perforation. The resistance of the
filter cake will increase as solid or deposited but other resistance will remain constant through
the process.
It is important to know when to remove the filter cake thus a relationship between the filter cake
thickness and time must be establish. To do this consider a filtration in a bowl of radius R and
the suspension is introduced as such a rate that the inner radius of the liquid surface remaining
constant, then at some time t after the beginning of filtration, a filter cake of thickness l will have
been built up and the radius of the inter face between the cake and the suspension will be r`.
filtrate is given:
r = specific resistance of the filter cake µ=
viscosity of the filtrate dV =
Eq ........ volume of filtrate flowing through the filter cake
If the centrifugal force is large compared with the gravitational force, the filtrate will flow in an
approximately radial direction, and will be evenly distributed over the axial length of the bowl.
sub in Eq
If the resistance of the cloth is negligible, -ΔP’ is equal to the centrifugal pressure. More
generally, if the cloth (considered together with the supporting wall of the basket) is equivalent
in resistance to a cake of thickness L, situated at the wall of the basket, the pressure drop –ΔP``
Thus the total pressure across the filter cake and the cloth (-∆P) is given by:
Before this equation can be integrated it is necessary to establish the relation between r` and V. If
ν is the bulk volume of incompressible cake deposited by the passage of unit volume of filtrate:
Substituting for dV/dt in the total pressure equation and rearrange and integrate between the limit
r`=R and r`=r` as t goes from 0 to t. -∆P is constant because the inner radius r0 of the liquid is
maintained constant:
From the above equation the corresponding volume of cake is given by:
Hayes K Q (2001 July) ‘Process Filtration: Characterizing Fluids & Medium Selection’,
Duffy J (2003 June) ‘Putting Crossflow Filtration to the Test’, Chemical Engineering p.35-41.