Non-Chemical Filtering

[Shark]

Does anyone here use celite for extremely fine particle filtering, I seen Nilered use it, but I don't know if it would hold up under extremely high/low Ph solutions. Can it be cleaned and reused?, if not then it's probably not cost effective to use it.

I have not used it but do something similar with broken paper fiber. After watching a few videos on it it has me curious to see how fine particulate size it can remove.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I have not used it but do something similar with broken paper fiber. After watching a few videos on it it has me curious to see how fine particulate size it can remove.

Is it some kind of “molecular sieve” like Zeolite?

 

[Shark]

I am not sure what it is called. It is made from diatomaceous earth. It’s most common use is as a secondary filtering aid in that iit reduces pore size of the filter. Usually it will be from 2 to 200um. The more you use the finer particulate it can catch. As with anything that can plug up a filter it will cause slow filtration. My concern is the potential problems in the waste stream. I really need to know more before trying it.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I am not sure what it is called. It is made from diatomaceous earth. It’s most common use is as a secondary filtering aid in that iit reduces pore size of the filter. Usually it will be from 2 to 200um. The more you use the finer particulate it can catch. As with anything that can plug up a filter it will cause slow filtration. My concern is the potential problems in the waste stream. I really need to know more before trying it.

Ok, I see

 

[4metals]

Years ago I used a filter which we always called a super filter. It was simply a deep bed of diatomaceous earth, 3-4" over a sheet of filter paper on a large 120 cm table top Buchner funnel. It was used on gold that was dropped "dirty" and filtered very slow. The benefit was it could be raked with a glass rod to break up the surface and expose new clean DE. Then when I filtered all the liquid out what I really needed were values in the filter. The DE was mixed with a few other flux ingredients (after all it is mostly clean silica to start) and it would melt into glass. Pour it into a cone mold and the glass is on top and all the values are below.

The process involved dissolving thick film e-scrap metallics in aqua regia, in a 500 gallon vessel until the reaction was spent. Then we added scrap metal and essentially cemented out the gold on to all of the other materials that didn't dissolve. By the next morning the acid was spent and the solution tested negative for values. We siphoned off the supernatant liquid as close as possible to the nasty slimy bottom mud (and all of the gold) which saved a lot of time filtering. Then the nasty bottoms went into a super filter. What remained on the filter was melted with the diatomaceous earth "filter" layer and the metallic cone was de-slagged and melted into shot for digestion in a much more manageable quantity of aqua regia.

The trick to the process was the filtration.

 

[Shark]

Very interesting. This could be a good way of filtering sludge from various cells. A lot to think about.

 

[eaglekeeper]

I am not sure what it is called. It is made from diatomaceous earth. It’s most common use is as a secondary filtering aid in that iit reduces pore size of the filter. Usually it will be from 2 to 200um. The more you use the finer particulate it can catch. As with anything that can plug up a filter it will cause slow filtration. My concern is the potential problems in the waste stream. I really need to know more before trying it.

Good point..... I didn't think about dealing with it as a waste stream. I'm not sure if it would absorb metal salts but it would have to be dealt with one way or another.