Best practices and technical solutions for reducing energy consumption during operation of centrifugal separators

Main groups of energy consumption in centrifugal separators were analyzed, as well as methods and technical solutions from leading manufacturers of centrifugal separators for energy consumption reduction in processes of clarification/separation of liquid food products.During operation of centrifugal separators there are energy consumption contributors as the following: mechanical losses in the drive, electrical losses in the motor, energy consumption for hydraulic friction in the bowl, windage (air friction of the bowl) and energy consumption for product feed and discharge.Utilization of frequency inverters for separator drive control helped to simplify drive design and control but also reduced energy consumption.Changing from gear to belt drive offered considerable drive efficiency increase from 75-80% to 90%.Further implementation of integrated direct drive controlled with frequency converter allows to increase separator's drive efficiency to 93-95%.Optimization of impeller geometry of centripetal pumps for discharge of separated product allows to reduce the hydraulic friction losses in open-type separators with reduction in total energy consumption by 10%.Biggest energy losses in centrifugal separators are induced by air friction of the bowl.There are several technical solutions suggested for reducing air friction: creating vacuum in the bowl chamber or reducing the bowl rotation speed due to a decrease in the separators capacity.Such solutions can help to save up to 40% of total energy consumption.Additional potential in reducing energy consumption and losses of other resources, such as water for operating the separator, as well as product losses reduction has implementation of intelligent centrifuge control.As examples: bowl speed control depending on product feed capacity or changed separation efficiency requirements; solids discharge control depending on separated product turbidity, etc.However, this requires separate research on each individual technological process and even at each enterprise with their unique production conditions.