Design Modification in the Stationary Bowl of Annular Centrifugal Extractors to Handle Adverse Conditions

The annular centrifugal extractor is one of the robust stage-wise solvent extraction contactors. In a multistage operation, failure of any single stage leads to the stoppage of the entire annular centrifugal extractor cascade. The present work describes the design modifications incorporated in a centrifugal extractor cascade system to ensure smooth operation in the event of any single-stage failure in the cascade. In this work, the interstage inclined overflow line performance has been compared with the other designs reported in the literature. Three different experimental setups were tested: (i) inclined overflow line, (ii) end-stage centrifuge with inclined overflow line, and (iii) horizontal overflow line. The flooding experiments were conducted, and results show that the performance of the inclined overflow line along with the inclusion of the end-stage centrifuge is superior to the other experimental setups. This design would help to complete the extraction process without shutting down the entire cascade.