Industrial Filter Presses
Industries from pharmaceuticals to food, chemical to mining all use a very cool CNC technology called Filter Press (or Plate-and-Frame Filter press). Their purpose is simple, squeeze and filter out as much liquid out of a given pile of material.
Their operation, which can be manual, semi-automatic or fully automatic is pretty simple, you load-up the plates with slurry from the inside and the machine will proceed to squeeze out all the liquid from the source material.
Why are filter presses important?
Many industries produce slurries or liquid/solid suspensions in which the solids do not dissolve into the liquid, filter presses work by separating the solids from the liquids. The “cake” which is left on the filter plates can then be processed, packaged or sent off for further refining.
Generally, filter presses work in batches, the plates are clamped together and a pump send the liquid/solid suspension into the filter press which are then filtered with the liquid flowing through and the filter cake staying in the filter press plates. The plates are then opened-up and the solid is removed with the process being repeated again. Mining is a great example to help you visualize why these machines are so vital. Mining companies use a lot of water to help clean and move the rock from one place to the next, all of this slurry contains minerals and also heavy metals which have both value and can damage the environment. Having a filter press allows the easy removal of these minerals and other particulate solids out of the water for more efficient transport and further processing.
Each filter press is custom to the application it’s intended for based on volume of filtration, location and a host of other customizable features to get optimal filtration results. Check-out this video to get an idea of what these awesome machines look like up close.
These come in a host of different sizes as well, for instance, Pacific Press, one of the leaders in the filter press industry, has models which can fit comfortably in a garage to MASSIVE Filter Presses that require a warehouse. Their operation may seem simple but they do a lot of the grunt work that simply wouldn’t be possible efficiently using any other method.
Some industries like wine, are very seasonal and require a filter press to squeeze the juice out of the grapes once a year for only a few weeks, as such, companies such as Pacific Press not only build custom filter presses for industries around the world but also rent them out. Gone are the days of throwing grapes in a barrel and having employees squish them with their bare feet to extract the liquid!
You can see lots of awesome pictures about both filter presses and their applications at Pacific Press Company which recently released an awesome website found at PacPress.com.