Optimization of the wash liquor flow rate to improve washing of pre-deliquored filter cakes

Filter cake washing is a common way of improving the quality in purity of particulate products in solid–liquid separation processes. In industrial applications, this process step is usually treated as a black box where optimization is performed through trial and error. Decisive progress has been made in academia by the development of physical models to describe the washing phenomena inside a porous structure such as filter cakes. Although some models have led to a better understanding of the process, experimental efforts are still inevitable for determining optimization strategies. This contribution is an empirical approach to investigate the influence of important process parameters of washing pre-deliquored cakes with the focus on the wash liquor and filtrate flow rate. In washing a pre-deliquored cake, low moisture content at the time of wash liquor addition can be very disadvantageous for the wash efficiency due to inhomogeneous flow. This can be the result of a poor re-wetting process while washing at low wash liquor flow rates. An increase of the flow rate was observed to be very advantageous to set higher moisture content of the filter cake and therefore enforce a homogeneous distribution of the wash liquor. A homogeneous distribution of the wash liquor inside the cake is generally required for good washing.