Development of an Inclined Plate Extractor-Separator for Immiscible Liquids

Energies

Shahid Munir¹  Syed Sheraz Daood¹  Syed Zahoor ul Hassan Rizvi² 

[1] School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK; E-Mail:;Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, University of the Punjab Lahore, Pakistan; E-Mails:

关键词: extraction;    separation;    chromatography;    hydraulic power;    batch mode;    hydrodynamic;   

DOI  :  10.3390/en20400957

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

A new inclined plates extractor-separator is developed for operation with immiscible liquids in which extraction and separation is achieved in one unit contrary to mixer settlers. The inclined plates extractor-separator combines turbulent jets for contacting, and an inclined plate for separation of the two phases. The inclined plates extractor-separator does not have any moving part inside the vessel. This feature makes it free from the mechanical problems associated with conventional apparatus. The proposed inclined plates extractor-separator was operated in batch mode under various operating conditions to evaluate its performance on the basis of extraction efficiency. Water (light phase) was used as solvent to extract ethyl acetate from a heavy phase pool of tetrachloroethylene and ethyl acetate. The ethyl acetate content was analysed using chromatography. A hydrodynamic study was carried out using high speed photography to understand the mechanisms occurring during mass transfer across the two phases. Furthermore, it was found that the proposed inclined plate extractor-separator reduces the overall operating time by 67% and consumes only 13% of the power in comparison to a mixer-settler. A hydraulic power consumption comparison with a mixer settler and a gullwing extractor-separator is also presented.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2009 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.