Towards prediction of cake detachment in tailings filtration

By offering an opportunity to fulfil environmental and process water recovery specifications, filtration of tailings has received increasing attention. In the process, complete cake detachment is required to maintain high throughputs. Incomplete discharge represents a bottleneck in the process. Therefore, a deeper understanding of cake detachment behaviour is a key to success. Experimental studies on adhesion forces between filter cake and cloth are a first step towards detachment prediction. Filtrations using an FLSmidth lab filter press and subsequent adhesion measurements with iron ore tailings and two different filter media show the influence of filtration pressure on adhesion.