Introduction

Screening is a separation of materials on the basis of size as a means of preparing a

product for subsequent operation. The screen size or mesh needed for the computation of particle
size must be confirmed, the lowest being the top while the highest at the bottom. It is also a
means of analysis, either to control the gage, the effectiveness of another operation or to
determine the value of a product for some specific application. Screening in performed using
screens equipped with one or two screen surfaces. A single screen provides two products. The
product from the top is called the oversize or plus product while the one which passes through
the screen is the undersize or minus product. Material passing one screen surface but remaining
on the next one in a double deck screen is an intermediate product. During ideal screening, the
plus product contains only particles greater than the size of openings of the screen surface while
minus product consists of particles smaller than the opening. In real operations the oversized
particles are present in the minus product and some undersized particles are in the plus product.
It results from adhesion of small particles to large ones and that some particles never get into
contact with the screen surface. The presence of large particles in the undersize product may be
caused by greater than nominal openings or rupture of the screen surface.

The most important from a chemical engineering standpoint is the small particle, out of
all the shapes and sizes found in solids. An understanding of the characteristics of masses of
particulate solids is necessary in designing processes and equipment for dealing with streams
containing such solids.

Individual solid particles are characterized by their size, shape and density. These
particles are obtained by breaking up a composite solid. This method of breaking up larger
particles to produce smaller particles of same material is called size reduction.

In this experiment, screen analysis procedure is used to analyze the solid particles. In
screen analysis, standard screens are used to measure the size and size distribution of particles.
Testing sieves are made of woven wire screens, the mesh and dimensions of which are carefully
standardized. The openings are square. Each screen is identified in meshes per inch. Also, screen
analysis can be represented by a graph of mass fraction of the material retained on each screen
versus the average diameter of the particle. (McCabe. Smith, and Harriott, 1993).
 The solid particles in this experiment is observed by its average particle size. There are
many ways an average particle size can be defined. For this experiment, the length mean
diameter, volume mean diameter, surface mean diameter and volume surface mean diameter are
used to quantify the average particle size of the particles.

The equation for length mean diameter D p is shown in equation 1. In the equation, xi

represents the mass fraction of the material retained on the screen while D pi is the average
diameter of the particle. It used in the study of comparison of droplet

xi

D p=
( )D2pi
xi
( )D3pi

Equation (1)

The volume mean diameter DpV is used in distribution of mass in a spray. The

equation for volume mean diameter is shown in equation 2.

[ ( )]
1
DpV = 3

xi
D pi
3

Equation (2)

The third is the surface mean diameter D pA . It is used in the study of adsorption, crushing and

light diffusion. The equation for the surface mean diameter is shown in equation 3.
 [ ( )]
xi

DpA=
( )
D pi
xi
D3pi

Equation (3)

The last one is the volume surface mean diameter which is also called as Sauter mean diameter.

Sauter mean diameter is represented by D pVA . This equation is used in the study of efficiency,

mass transfer and catalytic reactions. Equation 4 shows the equation for Sauter mean diameter.

1
D p=
xi
( )
D pi

Equation (4)

The purpose of this experiment is to know how to operate the wiley mill and the sieve shaker, to
make a screen analysis of particles using the tyler standard screens, and to evaluate the screen
analysis of particles by computing the length mean diameter, volume mean diameter, surface
mean diameter and the Sauter mean diameter.