Filtration performance test, an innovative lab scale device for industrial needs

National audience; Monitoring cake behavior for filterability and compressibility is a useful way to follow a solid precipitation process and anticipate solid/liquid issues in the separation stage. In many cases, experimental results have to be obtained in a few minutes with very small samples (just a few grams) of the suspension. Clearly, a need existed for a Filtration Performance Test (FPT) at a very compact scale. Such a tool could find applications in investigating toxic hazardous products such as radioactive materials or pharmaceutical compounds. Filterability and compressibility values can also be very helpful in choosing the best separator device when moving from pilot to industrial scale. The FPT presented here can meet a wide range of these needs. It will be shown that the technology enables cake specific resistance measurement in accordance with a modified Darcy's law at a constant pressure drop. A statistical approach on 1, 1.8 and 3 cm inner diameter test cells showed that wall effects can be ignored with even the smallest test cell. A high level of confidence is ensured for the filterability data obtained. Hydrodynamic modeling of tank, pipe and test cell situations with Openfoam CFD software led to an optimized design for the filtration tests. Settling zones are avoided and homogeneous cake construction is guaranteed inside the cell. Moreover, a user friendly tactile graphic display for the FPT enables online control of the suspension behavior, which helps ensure the ideal conditions of the industrial solid-liquid separation step. This development, presented in WFC12, concerns the very first commercial apparatus for the Filterability Pressure Test. The model was designed by FlowerSep company after some years of research and development in the CEA. With the Filtration Performance Test, researchers have obtained suspension behavior results contributing to quality control or to the choice of the most appropriate device for the solid/liquid separation stage (centrifugation, filtration).