Designing a water-pentane continuos seperator
Designing a water-pentane continuos seperator
(OP)
Dear all
We are looking to design a tool to seperate water and pentane from each other .
A little background :
Without getting into too many detailes, there is a pipe with pentane , that got mixed with some water due to a leak from an outside water pipe.
Now, there is about 10-20% water in the pentane, and we have installed a small seperator ( a little vessel of 50 galons ) that did the job in different places and materials, in the past, but this is kind of a "black box", and no one knows how to adapt it to this situation.
Now, I wish to understand the theory of how this works :
How do I design the vessel so it will have enough retention time to cause continuos seperation in it ? ( while only using the density differences ) ?
Maybe a cyclon design might fit ?
My hesitations are coming from the fact that all the places I looked talked about designing it according to stoke's law, but this will require very low Re, that I think will be difficult to achieve.
More data : The pentane-water is in around :10-13 bars.
Temp : around 20-30 DegC .
The main pentane pipe is around 24".
Any ideas?
We are looking to design a tool to seperate water and pentane from each other .
A little background :
Without getting into too many detailes, there is a pipe with pentane , that got mixed with some water due to a leak from an outside water pipe.
Now, there is about 10-20% water in the pentane, and we have installed a small seperator ( a little vessel of 50 galons ) that did the job in different places and materials, in the past, but this is kind of a "black box", and no one knows how to adapt it to this situation.
Now, I wish to understand the theory of how this works :
How do I design the vessel so it will have enough retention time to cause continuos seperation in it ? ( while only using the density differences ) ?
Maybe a cyclon design might fit ?
My hesitations are coming from the fact that all the places I looked talked about designing it according to stoke's law, but this will require very low Re, that I think will be difficult to achieve.
More data : The pentane-water is in around :10-13 bars.
Temp : around 20-30 DegC .
The main pentane pipe is around 24".
Any ideas?





RE: Designing a water-pentane continuos seperator
I bumped into your question during my forum search,
and it sounds familiar
I found a nice paper (student thesis) that summaries Liquid/Liquid cyclone separation (hydrocarbon and Oil in particular).
http://www
I also found a company that sells small and cheap units to you might want to check.
htt
(not sure about the pressure rating)
Find your HX leak, and say hello to the team.
K.