Experimental Evaluation of Conical-Cylindrical Thickeners Operanting with Aqueous Barium Sulfate Suspensions

摘要

The objective of this work was to analyze the performance of three continuous thickeners of different geometries in steady-state operation: the conical-convergent, with a cross section area decreasing with the depth, the conical-divergent, in which the cross section area increases with the depth and the cylindrical. The experimental runs were made in prototypes, operating with aqueous suspensions of barium sulfate with a density of 4520 kg/m~3. In order to verify how the thickeners capacity behaves as a function of the geometry. Computer simulations (Maple~(~R) software ) based on the model proposed by. were compared to the experimental data. It was verified through both, the computer simulations and the experimental tests, that the cylindrical thickeners presented smaller capacities than the conical-divergent thickeners; however larger than the one presented by the conical-convergent thickener. It was also observed that the larger the absolute value of the conical vertex's angle, the bigger is the difference among the capacities of the conical and cylindrical systems. The model used describes well the experimental behavior of continuous thickeners in steady-state operation.