Fibrous Coalescer for the Treatment of Hydrometallurgical Oil Dispersions

Abstract

Coalescence separation of oil dispersions of various hydrometallurgical extractants and solvents was studied using in-house-developed fibrous media that showed good separation performance toward four out of six common extraction reagents suspended in water as small oil droplets. The separation was affected by oil/water interfacial tension and their density difference. Further, using kerosene as the model oil, the separation was performed on a flatsheet bench to investigate the effect of other factors including the media thickness, influent oil concentration, and media face velocity. Media with larger thickness resulted in better separation and, correspondingly, higher pressure drop. The influent oil concentration and media face velocity were mutual constraints to the separation efficiency. When the oil concentration was low, the time-weighted average separation efficiency stayed the same or increased with the velocity; when it was high, the opposite trend prevailed.