Iron ore slime system with a particle size -75 micron. What will be the crucial parameter in scaling up of the thickener? for e.g., if the thickener is of 10L volume, can it be scaled up to 10000L to get the same performance?
For a given feed to the thickener, with optimised floc addition to give good overflow clarity and underflow density, the two critical parameters are liquor rise rate, and solids settling flux. Ie the liquor rise rate is the velocity of the water rising upwards which will tend to suspend fine solids, the limit is typically somewhere between 5 and 10 m/h. the solids settling flux is typically between 0.25 and 0.75 t/m2/h, I am always wary of going over 0.5.
Beside the answer of Justin you have to know the compresibility of the sediment. So you need two parameters, the solid flux function and the solid effective stress. With the solid flux density and the solid and fluid properties you can calculate the Thickener's Unit Area. After that, using the solid effective stress, you can simulate the operatiuon of the thickener and adjust the area according to the height you use.
I can recomend you my book "Solid liquid separation in the Mining industry (Springer) an the softweare SinEsp described in the book.
impacting parameters are feed rate, settling rate, bed thickness, input & output density ratio, type of fluctuation, type of pulp etc
Thickener design depends on slurry density, solid density, settling rate of particles and input flow rate.
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