Comprehensive Dewatering Behaviour Analysis for Fine and Flocculated Materials

摘要

The characterisation of material properties that describe dewatering behaviour is an important first step in the prediction and optimisation of the rate and extent of dewatering in industrial separation processes. There are many laboratory based tests that give an indication of how a material might dewater in a particular device such as a pressure filter, centrifuge or sedimentation device. Often these tests provide limited information about the potential rate or extent of dewatering in a specific device at a specified process condition. Some outputs represent empirical parameters specific only to the type of equipment that produced them, but others provide material properties that are generic to all solid-liquid separation processes. A new piece of software, “P527 B-SAMS”, has been developed at The University of Melbourne. It allows determination of full compressive yields stress and hindered settling function curves over a wide range of solids concentrations using data from a single batch settling test. The software has been made possible through a combination of a new mathematical transform for analysing height versus time settling data and an understanding of dewaterability parameters gained through many years of data collection and analysis on both model and real systems. The software is useful for detailed research work as well as for process design or field-based reagent testwork across materials ranging from mineral systems to water and wastewater treatment sludges.