Quark is right on the money. You really need to refine your question.
Consider the sand filter as just another porous media. You have some control over the average pore size and pore length and head loss by the sand gradation, particle uniformity coefficient and depth of sand.
Sand filters are cheap. The sand may be completely or partially confined via a fabric and or a vessel.
As Quark stated, sand filters are usually intermittantly backwashed (forcing a semi-batch type operation) and wasting some fluid as backwash.
As Quark stated, these filter's are commonly used to filter water. We civil engineers use them in swimming pools, septic tank drain fields, polishing WWTP effluent (for tertiary treatment, use dual media - sand & activated charcoal for lagoon effluent polishing just sand), sludge drying beds, stormwater treatment ponds effluent filtration , etc...
The filters are usually design based on Darcy's Law. Q = K * I * A. with Q = flow of filtrate, K = tranmissivity of the sand in units of length per time. I = vertical drop divided by the length of the flow (dimensionless) and A is the cross sectional flow area. K's are available from the manufacturer of the sand. K may be divided by the safety factor.