Separation Characteristics of Liquid– Liquid Dispersions: Gravity and Centrifugal Settlers

The separation efficiency/capacity of a large number of liquid–liquid dispersions has been investigated over a wide range of physical properties: 100 < Δρ < 625 kg/m3, 3 < σ < 58.3 mN/m, 0.3 < μC and μD < 12.2 mPa·s. For gravity separation, phase disengagement experiments were performed in a 100 mL measuring cylinder. The centrifugal separation was carried out in different sizes of annular centrifugal extractors (ACE) with rotor sizes ranging from 30 to 250 mm over a rotor speed of 6.28 rad/s < N < 314.15 rad/s. The rotor speed translated into power consumption over the range of 20–600 kW/m3. A novel data driven correlation containing physical properties and separation forces has been developed using Random Forest technique for dispersion number. The developed correlation could be used for the design of gravity or centrifugal separators.