Calculate countercurrent washing efficiency with dirty wash solution
CIM Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 944, 1990
R. B. Stein, Bechtel Corporation, San Francisco, California
Countercurrent decantation circuits (CCD) are often employed in hydrometallurgy to effect solids-liquid separation in combination with a barren solution wash to reduce losses of valuable solution components) from the tails. Bechtel Corporation uses its BEMSIM flowsheet-modelling PC computer program to simulate a CCD circuit where the "dirty" wash solution contains significant amounts of soluble components. An algorithm successfully models this condition and is simplified to a single expression when the wash solution is a "clean"solution containing no solubles. The CCD calculation module is compared to operating data from uranium and nickel-cobalt CCD circuits.
Keywords:
Countercurrent decantation circuits, Hydrometallurgy, Computer applications.
