The balance between capacity and performance of rotary mud filters

High capital equipment costs make it difficult for mills to justify expansion to match increases in cane production. The most cost effective expansion may be to increase throughput of existing plant and to accept the associated decrease in performance and/or increase in maintenance costs. A spreadsheet model of a sugar factory was developed to analyse the concept, but needs information on how the performance of typical stations varies with crushing rate. This paper investigates the tradeoff between cane crushing rate and the rotary mud filter performance, assuming throughout that consistent filter operation procedures can be maintained. The work uses SRI data as well as past records from the factory filter operation to develop expressions to estimate the value of the pol%mud solids in the filter cake as a function of the mud solids loading and wash water loading on the filters. It then explores the performance-capacity tradeoff for the filter station at the factory using these expressions.