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Diatomaceous Earths / Perlites

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Diatomaceous Earths/Perlites

Hygiene and Disinfection

The Filtration process

Filtration is one of the most efficient and universally used ways of separating solids from liquids. Almost all the liquids and solid that we encounter in our everyday life have been filtrated in at least one part of its manufacturing process: water, beverages, oils, varnishes, chemical products, rubbers, resins, antibiotics, detergents, etc.
If the solid impurities that are to be removed from any sort of liquid have strong, non deformable particles, all of similar size, there wouldn’t be any problem filtrating them through a strainer, obtaining a clear liquid.
But solids are often organic materials that come in different forms and sizes, this materials form a layer that first slows down the filtration process but ends up impeding the process. As a result we can find an accumulated incompressible “cake” formed over the coat because of the pressure used to filtrate.
The way to solve this problem is adding a solid material to the liquid you want to filtrate, this material will attract the impurities in the liquid, forming a sort of porous cake. The metallic coat will now separate the cake and the liquid.

Filter aids have a double function:
• reduce flow resistance
• catch and retain the unwanted solid materials inside the “t” zone.

A good filter aid must:
• have rigid intricately shaped, porous individual particles.
• form a highly permeable, stable and incompressible cake
• remove even the finest solids at high rates of flow
be chemically inert and essentially insoluble in the liquid being filtered.

Perlite

Perlite was created to solve the continuous problems that the filtration process presents, being generally chosen as filter aid because of it low cost and its yield.

Expanded perlite forms a cake that has up to 90% of free space and its apparent volume is 20-25% bigger than at similar weight any other filter aid uses.
This property transforms perlite into a matchless filter aid, in addition it is chemically inert to acid and alkali, it doesn’t transfer any flavor or odor.

With expanded perlite as filter aid you can obtain a maximum of this three characteristics, very important to a good filtration:
• Very light weight, easy dispersion and suspension.
• Chemically inert
• Capable of forming a highly porous cake, practically incompressible.

There is a wide variety of filter aids, each one used to filtrate different materials. This means that you can choose the filter aid that fits your needs.