Pressure filtration of a non-newtonian fluid from a soft porous-fibre suspensions

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Pulp is BC's largest export and one of Canada's largest export industries. This research is directly aimed at improving the competitiveness of this strategic industry through a better understanding of the pressure filtration process. Pressure filtration is a method for removing liquids from a suspension. Difficulties arise in modeling this process for papermaking suspensions as the fibres are soft and, are themselves, porous and the carrier fluid may have non-Newtonian properties through small additions of water soluble polymer additives. The vision of this proposed research is (a) To develop further our mathematical model of pressure filtration of concentrated papermaking suspensions to consider the case of a generalized Newtonian fluid. (b) To develop an experimental method to characterize the dewatering of chemical pulps in a 1D dewatering laboratory press with non-Newtonian fluids (c) To validate the mathematical model by comparison to experimentally measured density gradients in the filter cake through x-ray computed tomography A 2.5 year collaborative program with EKA Chemicals is proposed in which the research will conducted by 1 MASc and 3 undergraduate assistants