Design, Fabrication and Preliminary Testing of a Laboratory-scale Rotary Vacuum Drum Filter for Cane Sugar Mud
Author : Mardo, Liselle Anne Vianzon
Major Adviser : Arocena, Rhebner E.
Committee Members : Alcantara, Jerico Z.; Movillon, Jovita A.
Year : 2014
Month : April
Type : Thesis
Degree: BS
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Abstract
A laboratory-scale rotary vacuum drum filter was designed, fabricated and tested. It was designed using a constant of filtration, Cᵥ, of 455 065.226 5 lb/in³·s and filtration rate, r? of 0.067 mL/in²·s based on the operating parameters used in CADPI. The drum has a total filtration area of 242 in² and drainage member height of 0.25 in. One hundred forty-four 1⁄4-in lag pipes and twelve 1⁄2-in lead pipes were installed. Three materials (woven synthetic fabric, foam, five layers of cheesecloth) were wrapped around to drum serving as filter medium. The distributing valve was machined with openings which make the vacuum pressure variable as the drum rotates. The fabricated equipment was then successfully operated without and with washing using a drip line and was able to produce a filtrate of sugarcane juice from slurry of sugarcane mud taken from CADPI. It was found out that the actual Cᵥ were relatively high compared to the theoretical while the actual r? were relatively low compared to its theoretical value in both with and without washing mainly because of the decrease in feed slurry temperature due to time interval in between transport and runs that made the slurry viscous and hard to filter. Generally, the values were still close to the theoretical because of actual pressure drop and speed rotation were almost the same as the assumed values. The filtrate clarity was almost in the desired range, the moisture content of the filter cake was desirable and the polarity and purity using the determined brix of filtrate of each trial with washings did not drop that much. However, the pol did not increase as what is expected and therefore, washing must be studied further. The 2 % insoluble particles in the filtrate calculated from the material balances were responsible for the turbidity of the filtrate. Particle size determination indicated that these particles were of sizes below 75 μm. The Vₑ, α, K, Sᵥ were also computed for all the trials done.
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