1.

1 Title

Filtration.

2.1 Objective

a. To understand the working principles of plate and frame filter press.

b. To determine the water flux of filter medium and pollution index (NTU).

3.1 Introduction

Filtration is widely used in various industry such as wastewater treatment industry, food
and beverage industry, chemical industry and pharmaceutical industry. It is operating under the
theory of solid and liquid separation by flowing liquid with solid suspension through porous
mediums which retain the solid suspensions and liquid flows out as permeate.

Plate and frame filter press is one of the most used filtering machines due to its
simplicity in usage and efficiency it can produce. It can operate at pressure between 60-80psi
and only suitable for low solids (<2% solids), or solids composed of fines (~200 mesh).
However, they will essentially dewater many combinations of particles size distribution and
percent solid slurries.

These are some of the consideration needed to be taken note in order to operate this
machine well. Firstly, the pores size of the filter mediums need to be smaller compare to the
size of solid suspension in liquid flow in or else the filtration would not be occurring. Cake
compressibility needs to be considered, on whether it will produce compressible cake or
incompressible cake. Filter aids is the key to solve problem arsing from slow filtration rate,
undesirable filtration clarity and rapid medium binding.

In this experiment, liquid-solid slurry is first fed into the filter press and pressurised to
travel across the filter membranes or medium. The void between the plates is filled with the
slurry as the liquid passes through the filter medium. The solids are retained from passing
through the filter medium whereas liquid (filtrate) is allowed to permeate freely. The solids
will remain in the void between the plates, until the plates discharge the filtered solids.

There are pros and cons utilising plate and frame filter press as well. The major
advantage is that it can be easily to clean up and replace the filter cloth or membranes. This
leads to low maintenance cost as shorter time is needed to clean up or replacing the cloth or
membranes. Besides, it is capable operating in high pressure drop conditions and ‘difficult”
slurries or materials. Aside from that, it can provide large are for filtration on a small floor
space as well as internal inspection like leakage is easily being detected. However, there are
also disadvantage such as it is usually operating in batch process and requires high labour cost,
especially when manual discharge of filter cake is involved. It also requires large feed
concentration, inlet ports of the filter have a tendency to encounter blockage and leakage.

4.1 Methodology

Figure 1: Schematic Diagram of Plate and Frame Filter Press

Figure 2: Plate and Frame Filter Press