Liquid-liquid extraction. Choice, calculation and design of devices

The aim of this work is to study the problematic due to the choice of an equipment, to its size and to its industrial bringing into operation. Besides its efficiency to carry out a mass transfer, the economical interest of an industrial device will be proportional to its specific rate (volume treated by surface unit of the cross section of the extractor). Nevertheless, as it seems to be logic to maximize the three parameters which have an influence on it (transfer coefficient, interfacial surface and transfer potential), there exists no device which can modify separately any of these parameters. In order to satisfy these aims, a great diversity of devices have been put on the market. Indeed, it exists about twenty different industrial devices. This diversity leads the engineer, during the design of a solvent extraction device, to take difficult and subjective decisions without pilot experiment on the considered system. The main problem of an economical and optimized calculation of the liquid-liquid extractors from theoretical data has still not found totally satisfying solutions. Thus, except in some cases where we have empirical correlations, the recourse to prototype experiments is required and the most recent advances have resulted essentially to define more reliable rules for the extrapolation of these experiments for the size of industrial devices. (O.M.)