Is Chilling unit essential for Vanadium recovery plant?

Hi Friends,

We all are well aware that Vanadium sludge is produced as byproduct in Alumina refinery. In earlier post, we have already outline the production process for recovery of Vanadium sludge from Bayer liquor. The unit operations and unit processes involved in recovery of Vanadium sludge are listed below-

• Cooling of Bayer liquor,
• Crystallization process,
• Separation of solids from crystallized slurry,
• Centrifuging operation.

Cooling of Bayer liquor requires drop in temperature by a few degree only which can easily be attained by any efficient heat exchange system. Since the handled flow rate is very small and thus Plate heat exchangers may be preferred over other types of heat exchangers.

Installation of Chilling unit for the purpose in place of simple heat exchangers will definitely serve the purpose but it will be a luxury for meeting the process requirement as the Chilling unit will be capital intensive over PHE for similar duty conditions. In addition, for such a small temperature gradient Chilling unit is never considered. Thus it can be concluded that Chilling unit is not required for production of Vanadium sludge from Bayer liquor.

Trust, the facts have been clearly elaborated. Please put your views / remarks / suggestions / comments, if any.

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Thanks and regards.

Kunwar Rajendra