Supergravity Fractionation Machines: Revolutionizing Solvent Separation

Supergravity Fractionation: A Breakthrough Technology

Distillation is a common separation and purification method used in chemical processes. Among the distillation equipment, supergravity continuous distillation is a new type of equipment for the purification and separation of chemical substances in a supergravity environment. It can effectively improve the distillation efficiency and reduce production cost, therefore it has been widely used in industry.

Supergravity liquid separation equipment is a complete rectification process that uses centrifugal forces far greater than the Earth’s gravity to accelerate the rate of settling of substances, allowing the different components of a mixture to be separated.

The principle is that the material is pushed outwards to form a gradient within a centrifugal field rotating at high speed, thus using centrifugal force to separate the mixture.

The Importance Of Solvent Separation In Various Industries

As industrialization accelerates and the standard of living improves, the use of organic compounds is becoming more and more widespread.

However, these organic substances not only pollute the environment but also have a negative impact on human health. Therefore, how to effectively recycle organic solvents has become one of the most crucial issues in the current environmental protection work.

The high-efficiency solvent recovery unit uses advanced technology that can recycle and reuse organic solvents to meet the requirements of environmentally friendly green process operations.In the process of recycling organic solvents, it is not only possible to reduce a large amount of emissions of organic substances, but also to reduce the production costs of enterprises.

The systematic recovery of organic solvents avoids the need to purchase organic solvents repeatedly and also reduces the cost of waste disposal, substantially increasing the environmental + economic benefits.

What Is Supergravity Fractionation Machine?

• Supergravity distillation uses the principle of supergravity technology to strengthen the gas-liquid mass transfer process. In essence, it uses a rotating centrifugal force field to replace the conventional gravity field, which greatly increases the relative speed of the two vapor-liquid phases, accelerates the renewal of the phase interface, and increases the production intensity exponentially, and achieving increased efficiency, with smaller equipment and reduced energy consumption.
• The separation efficiency is significantly limited under the influence of normal earth gravity. Since the physical and chemical processes in hypergravity are very different from those in the Earth environment, this equipment holds important promise for scientific research and industrial production.
• But if the gravitational effect of each molecule in the separation system can be increased, the separation efficiency will be significantly improved. This is the separation principle used in this equipment.

Key Applications: Solvent Separation & Recovery

Organic solvents are commonly used in the production of pesticides, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, and most of them can be recovered and reused. Most enterprises generally use traditional packed distillation columns and other gas-liquid transfer equipment to separate and process them by means of rectification.

In conventional tower equipment, the liquid film flows slowly, the mass transfer coefficient is low, however, the equipment is large, the space utilization is low and the production efficiency is low.

In order to solve this problem, highly efficient solvent recovery and separation equipment have been developed and applied on industrial production lines. Super gravity distillation columns have been successfully used in industrial production of API, pharmaceutical intermediates, fine chemicals, biodiesel, environmental protection, food, brewing, and other industrial applications.

Application of Supergravity Distillation Columns In Solvent Recovery Processes:

1. Methanol Recovery

A super gravity distillation column is working through a continuous distillation method and three intermediate feeds, with a feed methanol mass fraction of 70% and a reflux ratio of 1.5. The product obtained has a methanol mass fraction of 99.85% and a reboiler residue with a methanol mass fraction of less than 0.2%. The complete methanol recovery system realizes high purity methanol product yield of 12 tonnes/d.

2. Ethanol Recovery

For alcohol recovery, a super gravity distillation column with three rotor layers is used to process 400 kg/hr in continuous distillation, with a feed ethanol volume ratio of 40% and operating at a reflux ratio of 2.5.

The alcohol product concentration can reach more than 95% by volume, with a residual solution discharge volume ratio of less than 0.5% and a daily output of 4.5 tonnes of qualified high purity ethanol product.

We are capable to provide complete solution for continuous or intermittent distillation recovery of organic solvents such as formaldehyde, toluene, methylal, ethylene glycol, acetonitrile, ethyl acetate, acetone, tetrahydrofuran, dimethyl sulfoxide, n-butanol, methylene chloride, silyl ether, cycloethane, isobutane, isopropanol, glacial acetic acid, acetic anhydride, DMF, DMSO, DMAA, DMDA, etc.

How Supergravity Fractionation Differs From Traditional Separation Methods

An ordinary distillation tower (plate or packed tower) is used to complete the heat and mass transfer between the vapor and liquid phases under the action of the earth’s gravity field (1 G), thus achieving the separation of the product components.

The ordinary distillation tower in the gravity field under the liquid flood velocity is small, generally in 1.5-1.6m/s, the vapour phase velocity must be less than the liquid flood velocity, otherwise it will be liquid flood, then the distillation operation can not be carried out, thereby limiting the tower vapour velocity increase, vapour, liquid two-phase mass transfer of the enhanced effect of liquid is limited.

The separation of substances in a conventional distillation process depends on the difference in volatility, i.e. the difference in the magnitude of vapor pressure, between the substances. However, as the volatilities approach, it is often necessary to use multi-stage distillation or other auxiliary techniques to improve the degree of separation.

Supergravity distillation equipment can expand the separation factor and thus increase the separation efficiency. Based on a comparison of project results, an increase of more than 200 times is possible, making it superior in efficiency for some very complex separation applications.

The same capacity requires much smaller equipment, the height is reduced by a factor of 8-10 and the separation effect is greatly improved, the theoretical number of plates per unit volume is greatly increased and the height of the mass transfer unit is only about 1m. The concentration of material in the discharged waste water can be less than 0.5%.

Inspection and maintenance are convenient, and low cost, ordinary packing tower needs half a year of maintenance, and annual cleaning packing, which is more time-consuming, and laborious. And super gravity tower only need to replace the machine seal ring every six months.

The smaller size of the plant means that less rotational energy is consumed and the high efficiency reduces energy consumption, making it an environmentally friendly chemical production plant.

Due to its wide range of applicability, the equipment is suitable for purification, extraction, adsorption and other chemical reaction applications and can be used in a wide range of chemical processes.

Working Principle of Supergravity Fractionation Machines

• Gravity-enhanced separation: the driving force
  • Super gravity distillation achieves a super gravity field (10-1000G action) environment, with super gravity factors typically reaching around 350-450. The vapour-liquid two-phase velocity reaches 4-12m/s, which significantly increases the liquid flood velocity.
  • The liquid in the column is accelerated and thrown out under the high-speed rotation of the rotor, forming a micron-to-nanometer liquid film, liquid filament, and liquid droplet between the rotor and the stator, which greatly strengthens the heat and mass transfer process between the two phases of steam and liquid, making the mass transfer efficiency more than ten times higher than that of ordinary distilling towers.
  • A hypergravity environment is an environment in which an object experiences an acceleration greater than the acceleration of Earth’s gravity. In this high-gravity environment, the relative density of substances changes, and the separation between different components becomes correspondingly more difficult, and the fine separation process requires the use of the physical properties of hypergravity.

• Design and components of supergravity fractionation machines
  • The equipment consists of a cylindrical cylinder with a built-in rotating body. Under the action of the rotating body, the material particles form a separation layer. The gravitational field is regulated by varying the speed of rotation and the radius of the cylinder. It will produce a significant separation between the material components. The machine is easy to operate and only some basic parameters such as temperature, pressure and flow rate need to be set to complete the recovery process automatically.
• When the motor drives the pump shaft, the screw rotates around its own axis on the one hand and rolls along the inner surface of the bushing on the other, forming the sealing chamber of the pump. With each rotation of the screw, the liquid in the sealing chamber advances one pitch, and with the continuous rotation of the screw, the liquid is pressed in a spiral fashion from one sealing chamber to another, forming an efficient separation unit.
• Due to the mutual engagement of the individual screws and the close fit of the screws to the inner wall of the liner, one or more sealing spaces are formed between the suction and discharge ports of the distillation tower cycle. As the screws rotate and engage, these seal spaces are continuously formed at the suction end of the pump, pushing the liquid in the suction chamber continuously along the screw shaft to the discharge end to form the separation fluid.
• The equipment uses a number of sophisticated processing technologies, making recovery very efficient and recovering large quantities of organic solvents in a single treatment. High efficiency solvent recovery equipment is very versatile in operation and can be custom designed for different organic solvent materials, recovery volumes etc. to meet the production needs of different subjects.
• We can customise our products to suit the needs of your process flow, so that they can be better adapted to your application needs of different industries.

Applications of Supergravity Fractionation

1. Petrochemical industry: separating solvents from crude oil
   • Supergravity distillation technology enables the efficient separation of alkanes of different carbon chain lengths in the petrochemical industry, resulting in high purity fuels.
2. • Pharmaceutical industry: isolating active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In the pharmaceutical sector, it can be used to purify and extract natural substances, such as essential oils and active ingredients from plants, and can eliminate the influence of other impurity components on the quality of the final product.
3. • Chemical manufacturing: purifying specialty solvents. In realistic scenarios where certain chemical separation processes are difficult to achieve, this equipment can be ideal, especially for catalysts or more complex systems. Hollow fibres are a very valuable and important substance used in the manufacture of separation membranes and organosols. The use of supergravity distillation enables the production of hollow fibres in large quantities. In the chemicals industry, supergravity distillation is often used in processes for the production of high purity materials such as ultrapure water, semiconductors, etc.
4. • Environmental remediation: removing contaminants from wastewater. Ion exchange is one of the more common separation techniques used in the water treatment industry to remove problems that exist with high concentrations of certain ions in water, such as sodium ions. Ion exchange using supergravity distillation is one of the quicker and more effective ways to do this in the industry today.
5. • Biological field：It is widely used for the separation and purification of biological macromolecules such as proteins, DNA, RNA, etc. Traditional isolation methods usually require multi-step operations and can lead to denaturation or inactivation of molecules, which can affect subsequent analysis and research.
6. Supergravity distillation is a highly efficient technique for maximizing the effectiveness of distillation. Its wide range of applications in the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, biological and industrial sectors offers unparalleled advantages for the separation and purification of target substances.

Process Optimization and Control

• Hypergravity distillation is an efficient distillation technique based on a hypergravity environment where diffusion, precipitation and disturbance effects are weakened by simulating a high gravity field, resulting in efficient, pure material separation.
• The manufacture of supergravity distillation units requires the use of advanced technological materials and processes. These include strength ceramics, steel alloys and fibrous materials. The centre of the device is equipped with an accelerator spindle that can generate accelerations of up to several hundred times the Earth’s gravity.
• Meanwhile, In order to ensure high precision separation, high precision sensors, electronic instruments and other control system units are required to complete with the system. A high degree of automation and intelligence allows for automated processing production and data recording, reducing human intervention and errors in operation and improving process reliability and stability.
• Separation of particles of different densities, sizes and shapes varies depending on the centrifugal force. The optimum design of the rotor and barrel diameter optimises the centrifugal force generated, improves the separation between the different particles by means of a specific design structure and by adjusting the size of the rotor speed and the number of rotors.
• The Super Gravity Distillation Machine is a highly efficient, stable and reliable grading machine in a number of industries including chemical, power and bio-pharmaceutical. With the continuous development of technology, the super-gravity distillation machine will be further improved and optimised to provide continuous support for the efficient operation of modern industry.
• Powerful mechanical load-bearing capacity and stable rotational speeds allow workpieces to be processed and handled at high rotational speeds and high gravitational acceleration. These special process conditions improve material properties, machining accuracy and surface quality and can be used for a wide range of materials.

Conclusion

• Being a new type of green equipment, the high-efficiency solvent recovery unit not only has good technical strength, but also can greatly reduce the production burden of a company, and at the same time can protect the environment to a greater extent and achieve the goal of sustainable development on the solvent separation industry.
• Due to the high efficiency and low cost nature of supergravity distillation, this equipment will have a promising future. In addition, as new technologies and markets emerge in a variety of fields, the equipment will enable efficient separations in a wider range of applications.
• The research and application of supergravity distillation equipment are one of the ways to achieve the core manufacturing objectives of efficient, cost-effective, high quality, and environmentally friendly production in the chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries, which have broad market prospects for the future.