Study on the solid-liquid separation mechanism of the inverting filter centrifuge’s dewatering process

Abstract Centrifugal dewatering is a common process used for solid-liquid separation in chemical industry. This process involves the intricate interaction between particles and liquid under centrifugal pressure. Accurate modeling and simulation of the kinetic process are key to optimizing the dewatering parameters. However, the feeding stage is often disregarded in most of the simulation studies, leading to obvious differences from the actual conditions in the dewatering behavior and initial solid concentration. In this study, a 1D-axisymmetric model is established to simulate the feeding and pre-dewatering stages of an inverting filter centrifuge. The simulation results at different rotating speeds agree with the experimental observations and show a significant difference compared to the model that ignores the feeding stage. Both phenomena demonstrate the method in this study is accurate and reliable. Furthermore, the effects of feeding parameters are investigated using the Sobol global sensitivity analysis method. This study provides crucial assistance for the parameters’ optimization and prediction of centrifugal dewatering.