Liquid-liquid separation using steady-state bed coalescer

Abstract

© 2016, Association of Chemists and Chemical Engineers of Serbia. All rights reserved. This paper presents a literature review on the current understanding of liquid-liquid separation that is immensely widespread in practice, highlighting the steady-state bed coalescer being a good solution in various engineering application. Generally, the fibre bed coalescence has proven to be very effective separation method in the industry. Due to the complexity of bed coalescence phenomenon coalescer design and sizing procedure relies on experimental test. This review provides a research overview of the key phenomena essential for the efficient bed coalescence, such as mechanisms of droplet coalescence and emulsion flow through the fibre bed. In addition to this provides an overview of the current knowledge about coalescer’s design properties and variables such as: fluid velocity, fluid flow orientation/flow mode, fibre bed geometry, and bed length.