Sciencemadness Discussion Board

List of separation processes

eznurak - 13-7-2009 at 05:31

Hey all,

I posted this to diybio and diytranshumanist yesterday. It should probably go here too.

http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_frm/thread/cdb4...

There's a neat list of separation processes on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_process

Here it is in a slightly more usable format.

* Adsorption
* Centrifugation and Cyclones - density differences
* Chromatography involves the separation of different dissolved
substances as they travel through a material. The dissolved substances
are separated based on their interaction with the stationary phase.
* Crystallization
* Decantation
* Demister (Vapor) - removing liquid droplets from gas streams
* Distillation - used for mixtures of liquids with different boiling
points, or for a solid dissolved in a liquid.
* Drying - removing liquid from a solid by vaporising it
* Electrophoresis Organic molecules, such as protein are placed in a
gel. A voltage is applied and the molecules move through the gel
because they are charged. The gel restricts the motion so that
different proteins will make different amounts of progress in any
given time.
* Elutriation
* Evaporation
* Extraction
** Leaching
** Liquid-liquid extraction
** Solid phase extraction
* Flotation
** Dissolved air flotation - suspended solids are non-selectively
removed from slurry by bubbles that are generated by air coming out of
solution
** Froth flotation - valuable, hydrophobic solids are attached to air
bubbles generated in the flotation machine by mechanical agitation of
an air-slurry mixture, float, and are recovered
** Deinking - hydrophobic ink particles are separated from
hydrophilic paper pulp in paper recycling
* Flocculation - density differences utilization a flocculant such as
soap or detergent
* Filtration. Mesh, bag and paper filters are used to remove large
particulates suspended in fluids, eg. fly ash, while membrane
processes including microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration,
reverse osmosis, dialysis (biochemistry) utilising synthetic membranes
can separate micrometre-sized or smaller species.
* Fractional distillation
* Fractional freezing
* Oil-water separation - gravimetric separator used to remove
suspended oil droplets from wastewaters in oil refineries,
petrochemical and chemical plants, natural gas processing plants and
similar industries.
* Magnetic Separation
* Precipitation
* Recrystallization
* Sedimentation - density differences
** Gravity separation
* Sieving
* Stripping
* Sublimation
* Vapor-liquid separation - designed by using the Souders-Brown equation.
* Winnowing
* Zone refining

- Bryan

gsd - 13-7-2009 at 06:01


Off-hand I can tell that you have missed "Dehumidification" :)

gsd

Sedit - 13-7-2009 at 08:52

The first couple of links should be very helpful in explain seperaton processes.

http://www.thevespiary.org/sedit/Crystalization,%20Purificat...

eznurak - 13-7-2009 at 09:00

Quote: Originally posted by Sedit  
The first couple of links should be very helpful in explain seperaton processes.

http://www.thevespiary.org/sedit/Crystalization,%20Purificat...



Yes, I copied those files yesterday, thank you. I will also go off and add dehumidification to the list.

I have some files that you may be interested in- find me on IRC sometime and we'll talk.

- Bryan

[Edited on 2009-7-13 by eznurak]

JohnWW - 13-7-2009 at 10:43

Those separation processes are covered in the chemical engineering books that I have uploaded and linked in the Chemical Engineering thread in the References section. By "extraction" I presume you mean solvent extraction. You have missed out diffusion, e.g. to separate gases and isotopes as gaseous compounds, although chromatography is a species of it.

eznurak - 13-7-2009 at 10:46

What sort of diffusion setups exist? Are there ways to do gas diffusion? Thanks for the chemical engineering books.

- Bryan

chemoleo - 13-7-2009 at 14:20

A lot of these processes are partially emcompassed by others, there's overlap.

I'd also add

Affinity purification
Size exclusion chromatography
Ion exchange chromatography
HPLC

etc etc