ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Fabrication and evaluation of a non-woven filter media for water pretreatment applications

Vajihehsadat Cheraghchi and Behzad Shiroud Heidari

Department of Petrochemical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Mahshahr Campus, Mahshahr, Iran

E-mail: behzad.shiroudheidari@uwa.edu.au

Received: 8 November 2022  Accepted: 21 May 2023

Abstract:

Cake filtration using non-woven filters has been known as a promising water pretreatment technique for decades. In this work, four types of non-woven filters with different thicknesses were fabricated by a hot-pressing technique using polypropylene fibre webs. The filters were employed to filtrate a slurry by using a vacuum cake filtration apparatus to study the performance of the filters. The excellent bonding points between fibre webs were found by scanning electron microscopy. X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescence analysis of the filter cake revealed the major mineral phases in the cake were calcium carbonate, calcium oxide, iron oxide, and magnesium oxide. Specific cake resistance, filter resistance, and total resistance were measured from constant pressure filtration tests to evaluate the filter with and without using a filter aid. Type D filter with the highest thickness (594.14 µm) showed the lowest total filtration resistance (5.11 × 10⁺¹¹ m⁻¹) indicating the best performance among the other types of filters. Adding the sawdust in the slurry as the filter aid reduced both cake resistance and filter resistance, resulting in a higher filtrate flow rate. The total resistance decreased by 75.1% using 3.0 g of sawdust in the cake filtration process. According to the results, the filter cake was slightly compressible, and the filter with the highest thickness had the lowest total filtration resistance indicating the best performance among the other types of filters.

Keywords: Cake filtration; Non-woven filter; Hot-pressing technique; Specific cake resistance

Full paper is available at www.springerlink.com.

DOI: 10.1007/s11696-023-02881-6

Chemical Papers 77 (9) 5507–5518 (2023)