Influence of Particulate Transport on Filtration Experiments in a Vertical Filter Vessel

Solid-liquid filtration is a versatile unit operation widely used within industry. In this work, we determined the residence time distribution of fluids and particles in a vertical filter vessel in order to describe the complete behavior of cake filtration experiments. By combining the residence time distribution with a lag time due to transport along the length of the filter element, we were able to describe the whole filtration step using nonlinear parameter estimation of two parameters. Analyzing the difference between the cake filtration-only model and experiments can help inform us about when other particle retention mechanisms are occurring. Our presented approach can help avoid the need for arbitrary cropping and linearization of data when analyzing cake filtration experiments. Furthermore, it is of value for describing and controlling dynamic cake filtration operations.