Crossflow microfiltration for suspension thickening

The crossflow filtration of a non-Newtonian talc slurry has been investigated. The method of calculating the pressure changes in a standard filter configuration are described. This procedure can also be used to estimate deposit thickness on the filter surface. The method has been demonstrated to give good results by comparing the predicted and calculated values when using a range of non-permeable tubes of known diameter. It is also shown that using measured pressure drop across a filter tube can lead to a poor estimate of the mean filter pressure. For four different filter tubes it was shown that there was a reasonable linear correlation between pseudo-equilibrium flux and wall shear stress for the case of a talc slurry. Using this information the performance of a filter could be predicted for different filters, pressure, flows and concentrations of talc if the rheological properties of the talc are known.