Separation of dispesed oil using fiber bed coalescer

Abstract

Although coalescers with fibers bed used in the industry for more than half a century, its design still requires experimental work. It is very hard to obtain some lasting relationships and interdependencies. Two-phase flow system (liquid / liquid dispersion) through the porous bed is quite complex and unknown. Fiber bed is a layer of high porosity, up to 98%, disordered structure; it is completely different from the bed of granular material that is still the focus of researchers modeling. Polymer fibers are elastic and their bed can compress provide different geometry. When you are looking to accomplish separation of different oil from waste water efficiency of different polymers can be extremely high for one oil, and low for another. This paper presents some results of the separation of different oils using fibers of different polymers. The experiments were performed in a laboratory device in the horizontal orientation of fluid flow, which in our studies proved the most effective. Model emulsion was prepared in drinking water at room temperature with 500 mg / l of dispersed mineral oil stirring constantly to obtain the average droplet size in the range of 10 μm.