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Int. J. Miner. Process. 86 (2008) 114 130 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijminpro

Raking in gravity thickeners

M. Rudman a,, K. Simic b , D.A. Paterson c , P. Strode b , A. Brent b , I.D. utalo c
b a CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Private Bag 33, Clayton South, Victoria 3169 Australia AJ Parker CRC for Integrated Hydrometallurgy Solutions, CSIRO Minerals, Bayview Rd Clayton, VIC 3169, Australia c CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering, PO Box 56 Highett, Victoria 3190 Australia

Received 18 December 2006; accepted 25 December 2007 Available online 10 January 2008

Abstract Thickener rakes are essential in the transport of sediment bed material to the underflow in conventional thickeners, however very few studies of bed transport have been published. In this paper, results from pilot-scale thickener experiments with tailor-made yield stress slurries are presented and compared to companion Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. Rake torque is a key issue in thickener operation and it was found that the yield stress of the suspension is the major factor in determining rake torque. Over a range of rake speeds, the measured torque was an almost linear function of yield stress. CFD simulations of the experiments allowed torque to be estimated, and results are shown to be within 20% of the measured values in all cases except the lowest (zero) yield stress suspension. Residence time distributions of solids in the bed were also measured and unusual results were found in which the relationship between residence time and distance from the underflow is not linear (or even monotonic). CFD results clearly show that for uniform sized rake blades, the over-delivery of an outer blade (compared to the next inner blade) sets up recirculation in the bed, especially in the outer regions of the tank, and this can result in long material pathways and hence long residence times. This picture is further complicated by the relative contributions of rake delivery and underflow rate, and indicates that a simple picture of plug flow in the bed is far from reality. The study illustrates the value that can be obtained from validated CFD modelling of thickener rakes. Crown Copyright 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gravity thickening; Raking; Transport; Dewatering; Modelling

1. Introduction A common way to separate solids from liquids for high volume applications is to utilise settling under the influence of gravity in large tanks, typically termed clarifiers, washers, or thickeners depending on the intended purpose of the separation step. In order to effect faster settling, flocculant is often added to the feed slurry and the sediment
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 3 9545 8093; fax: +61 3 9545 8080. E-mail address: Murray.Rudman@csiro.au (M. Rudman).

that forms is often of a thick consistency with high viscosity and a yield stress. The term conventional thickener refers to those tanks with a shallow base slope and a relatively shallow depth of sediment, and is the type of equipment that is the focus of this study. Material that settles in a conventional thickener moves towards the discharge partly under the action of gravity and by mechanical transport using rakes. Thickener rakes fulfil three main functions: 1) to move sediment to the underflow, 2) to assist in dewatering sediment that settles onto the thickener bed and 3) to scrape deposits away from the base, and sometimes the

0301-7516/$ - see front matter. Crown Copyright 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.minpro.2007.12.002

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walls, of the tank. It is the first of these functions that is the focus of this paper. Although thickener rakes are essential in the transport of bed material to the underflow in conventional thickener designs, and effective rake design and operation can reduce the likelihood of rat-holing, little is known about transport due to rake action in thickeners. The literature describing raking consists of just a handful of previous studies. Based on measurements made on full-scale thickeners, Gnthert (1984) found that increasing either blade velocity or blade height would improve raking and movement of bed material to the underflow. Warden (1981) and Albertson and Okey (1992) developed single equation mathematical models for spiral rake blades to investigate transport. Warden modelled the effect of a set of rake blades by approximating them as a continuous spiral. The validity of this approach is questionable, given that the pressure gradient along a rake blade between the upstream and downstream ends of individual blades is very different to that along the length of a spiral rake. The equations developed by Albertson and Okey (1992) had empirical constants that had to be determined experimentally or estimated mathematically, thus making general application difficult. Neither of these models takes the non-Newtonian nature of the bed into account and neither is able to provide details of the flow patterns that are generated by the rakes. Most of these studies have been related to the wastewater treatment industry, whereas our focus here is on conventional thickeners that are used widely in minerals processing applications. The only papers published to date that have sought to study the transport of bed material to the underflow during raking in thickeners have been the works of Frost et al. (1993), Szalai et al. (1994) and utalo et al. (2003). Frost et al. (1993) used a three-dimensional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model to predict the flow through a circular flat-bottomed wastewater thickener, with an emphasis on showing how raking efficiency was affected as blade angle and sizes were modified. They found that the efficiency increased as the blade height and length were increased and that the optimal blade angle was between 20 and 30. They did not show global transport patterns for their simulations. Szalai et al. (1994) used a two-dimensional CFD model (with a third, swirl component of velocity) to predict the liquid-only flow in a circular clarifier of conventional design and attempted to model the effect of the rake mechanism by artificially inducing swirl at the bottom of the thickener. Although they showed global transport patterns, the results did not agree with measured data. They stated that CFD modelling should include the rakes and therefore a three-dimensional model would be required.

In the most complete study of raking to date, utalo et al. (2003) combined CFD and small-scale experimental modelling in which an optically clear polymer gel was used to simulate a thickener sediment bed. They used flow visualisation and measured velocity fields using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The work showed that rake blades suck material behind them as well as pushing material in front of them toward the underflow. It was also clearly shown that the overall transport of material from the periphery of the thickener to the underflow occurred at the level of the rake blades and appeared as a spiral pattern that took one or more revolutions to traverse the distance from the tank periphery to the underflow. This pattern was generated by many rake passes. A comparison between the experimental velocity measurements and CFD predictions for individual rake components was good, suggesting that the CFD model developed there could be used with some confidence to predict transport in operating thickeners. No CFD simulations of global transport were presented in that study. In conventional thickeners, it is common for rake blades to be a uniform size along the rake arm. Warden (1981) first stated that this configuration will lead to a mismatch in delivery between neighbouring blades and an over-raking of the bed at the periphery of the tank when sufficient material is being delivered to the underflow. The small-scale experimental results of utalo et al. (2003) show that this over-raking at the periphery results in dyed material being segmented by rake passage, with material that flows below the arm being moved inward and material that flows above the arm moved outward. Together with CFD predictions, they showed that there is significant recirculation due to the mismatch in blade delivery. A major uncertainty in the experimental results of utalo et al. (2003) is the validity of using aqueous polymer gels to model dense, flocculated fine particle suspensions that are found in minerals processing applications. Another is the ability of the CFD model developed there to accurately predict global transport of the bed. In the present paper, experimental results from a 2 m diameter pilot-scale thickener in which flocculated, fine particle thickener underflows are used to approximate a thickener bed. Specifically, torque measurements and residence time distributions measured using an optical tracer are compared to results obtained from a CFD model based on that reported in utalo et al. (2003). Because the bed in the present study is opaque and it is not possible to see what is happening in the pilot unit, the CFD model allows an understanding of this complex flow to be gained that would be difficult to infer from the pilot-scale results alone. The paper is organised as follows: In Section 2 a description of the pilot-scale thickener process circuit

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and measurement techniques is presented. A brief outline of the CFD model is provided in Section 3. Rake torque measurements are presented in Section 4 and compared to data extracted from CFD simulations of the pilot-scale runs. Residence time results and companion CFD predictions that explain them are given in Section 5. Finally, summary and conclusions are presented in Section 6. 2. Experimental techniques 2.1. Pilot-scale thickener circuit The pilot-scale thickener facility used in this study is a closed loop system and is shown schematically in Fig. 1. A sample of slurry is mixed continuously in a 4.5 m3 mixing tank, and pumped out of the mixing tank underflow into the pilot thickener. The thickener tank is a 2 m diameter by 2 m high side wall tank with a 14 floor and a small discharge hopper (45 slope). This thickener is not used as a sedimentation and dewatering tank in the experiments reported here and instead plays the role of a through-flow holding tank in which the raking experiments are undertaken. The slurry is distributed into the thickener uniformly across a radius via a manifold comprising of four equi-spaced 19 mm nozzles. Underflow from the pilot thickener is fed back into the mixing tank. An on-board PID program in the variable frequency drive uses a feedback signal from the ultrasonic level sensor (Milltronics) to maintain a stable slurry height in

the thickener. The slurry level in the mixing tank was dictated by the requirement that an appropriate level of slurry must cover the impellor to ensure good mixing. Underflow was regulated by a PID loop (ABB Model ACS400) and flow meter (Danfoss DN25) combination. Other variables monitored on the underflow include density and temperature. Once steady slurry height and underflow conditions were attained in the thickener tank, the rake was turned on. The rake is mounted on a central shaft that is driven by a motor and gearbox at speeds between 0.2 and 2 rpm. The tip speed of the outer blade at 1 rpm corresponds to the same tip speed as that in a 40 m thickener operating at a rake speed of 3 rev h 1 (20 min rev 1). AVFD (Sumitomo NTAC-2000) was used to control the rake speed either by manual setting or by utilising the on-board programming capabilities. 2.2. Rake arm and rake blade design The rake arms are made from slotted rectangular section plate and the blades are bolted to the arm at the desired positions and angles. This allows rapid changes to be made to the number of blades, the blade spacing, angle of attack and type/size of blades (see Fig. 2a). For the conventional rake studies here, five blades were used and were mounted at 30 from the direction normal to the arm (see Fig. 2b). For most tests, the blades were a uniform size at 290 75 mm and it is noted that the radial position of the

Fig. 1. Schematic of the pilot-scale thickener flow circuit used during the rake investigation studies.

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Fig. 2. (a) Slotted rake arm system demonstrating easy blade positioning and blade angle setting and (b) schematic of rake configuration used in the tests.

trailing edge of one blade matches the radial position of the leading edge of the next (i.e. there was no blade overlap). For a few runs, blades that were 50% taller (290 112 mm) were used and a single 75 mm high paddle blade that ran parallel to the rake arm was also used in a few cases the latter approximates the case of a rake that has been completely scaled-up as it occurs frequently in minerals processing applications. The rake arms were attached to a common hub that was secured to the rake shaft by a taper lock arrangement. 2.3. Torque measurement The rake shaft is of hollow construction to allow direct measurement of torque using a TorqueTrak 9000 Digital telemetry system (Binsfeld Engineering). A full Wheatstone Bridge strain gauge mounted to measure torque on a rake shaft was connected to a battery powered radio transmitter. Strain data is transmitted to a radio receiver and the receiver outputs this data as a 10 V signal suitable for a standard data logging system. Prior to any experiment being conducted, the measurement system was zeroed with the rake shaft stationary and the arms and thickener clear of

any fluid. For this work, the highest gain setting of 8000 was selected to ensure the most sensitive measurements. The relationship between torsional strain, , and torque, T (Nm), for a hollow rotating shaft is described mathematically by: e 16; 000DO 1 m T p D4 D4 E I O 1

where DO and DI are the outer and inner diameter of the shaft respectively (mm) and the material properties of the shaft are described with E, the modulus of elasticity (N mm 2) and , the Poisson ratio (dimensionless). Based on predicted torque loadings, a hollow stainless steel shaft with 2.45 mm thick wall and outer diameter of 75.45 mm was chosen and was suitable for all measurements made in this study. The rake shaft is 2 m long with the lower end sealed with a welded end cap and the other end flanged for bolting to the gearbox output shaft. Measured torque results have a random local variation with a standard deviation of about 1.3 Nm over one rake rotation and these are averaged out. In addition, a repeat of an identical rake geometry and slurry showed a variation

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of about 3.5 Nm (12.5%) for a temperature variation of 3.5 C, possibly as a result of instrument drift. The pilot thickener was out in the open and subject to ambient conditions that varied, so the measured torque results presented in this paper have been averaged and corrected for instrument drift. 2.4. Solids tracer technique X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) revealed that the solids component of the feed slurry contains a significant proportion of kaolinite that is known to strongly adsorb a range of commercially available dyes. Consequently, an optical technique was chosen to measure solids residence time distributions using a reflectance spectrometer (GretagMacBeth, ColorEye XTH). After trials, the dye chosen was Azure A because it required less dye to saturate the kaolinite and the colour response was more intense than alternatives. Dyed material was rheologically indistinguishable from un-dyed material and provided sufficient contrast at low concentrations for good detection. A saturated solids tracer slurry was prepared by mixing 2 g of Azure A with 1 kg of feed slurry (solids content 11.3 wt.%) for 10 min. By adding this dyed tracer incrementally to untreated slurry and measuring the response with a reflectance spectrometer, a calibration curve was determined using the KubelkaMunk theory of reflectance (Kubelka and Munk, 1931). The most sensitive light wavelength for this system was determined to be 540 nm and this was the wavelength at which measurements were made. Denoting the reflectance at 540 nm as a function of tracer concentration as R(c), define the K/S value as a function of c, using K=S 1 Rc2 1 R02 2 Rc 2 R0 2

Fig. 3. The K/S value (absorbance/scatter) as a function of the solids tracer concentration.

by the rake, the mass of tracer added was generally in the range from 0.51 kg, whereas outside of this volume the mass added was between 12 kg. The greater mass of tracer was added in anticipation that there would be greater dispersion of this material by the time it appeared in the underflow. Note that slurry is re-circulated in a closed loop fashion in the pilot thickener system and consequently any tracer that appeared in the underflow was diluted to below detection levels in the mixing tank before being transferred back into the pilot thickener. 2.5. Slurry preparation and characterisation All pilot-scale experiments were undertaken at a sand mining operation, with the clay-based feed to the pilotscale thickener circuit being drawn from the underflow of the plant tailings thickener. The initial feed to this tailings thickener was all sub 100 m. To modify the rheology of this material, quantities of attapulgite clay were incrementally added to the slurry and mixed until homogeneous. A Haake VT550 rheometer was used with a cruciform vane to measure the static yield stress and a cup and bob (MV-DIN) was used to measure rheograms (shear stress as a function of shear rate). All measurements were performed at ambient temperature conditions. The rheograms are shown in Fig. 4. The rheology is shearthinning and there is little evidence of thixotropy. A HerschelBulkley (HB) rheology model was fitted to the rheograms, : s sy j g n 4 where is the total stress, y is the yield stress, is the : consistency, g is the strain rate and n is the flow index. Note that y, and n are model fitting parameters and do not have a physical significance of themselves, hence the vane yield stress and fitted HB yield stress usually take different values (although they are similar in magnitude). Note that the model fit values are those that

Plotting K/S as a function of dyed tracer concentration (Fig. 3) allows the solids concentration to be calculated as Solids tracer wt:k K=S 0:0297 0:2716 3

For the pilot-scale tests, 20 kg dyed tracer batches were made up by adding 2 g of Azure A per kilogram of slurry and then mixing thoroughly to ensure a uniform coverage of all particles in the sample. Residence time tests were performed by pumping a known mass of tracer through a 12 mm ID stainless steel tube into the slurry bed. Once the tracer had been delivered, the tracer delivery pump was turned off, the addition lance withdrawn and the rake and thickener underflow pumps were started simultaneously. If the location of tracer addition was in the volume swept

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Fig. 4. Rheograms of shear stress versus strain rate for the six slurries.

were subsequently used in the CFD modelling. The solids content of each slurry was calculated by drying samples. Table 1 summarises the material properties of the slurries used in the pilot thickener raking studies. The dependence of static yield stress on solids content is typical of mineral slurries, with little variation at low solids and, at higher solids concentration, quite large increases in yield stress with small variations in solids content. The range of static yield stress (0132 Pa) is representative of typical slurry yield stresses encountered in the minerals processing industry. 3. CFD modelling The CFD model solves the primitive variable forms of the equations for conservation of mass and momentum in an Eulerian framework with values stored at the corners of an unstructured tetrahedral mesh. The simulations were carried out using the commercial code CFX 5.4 which uses a finite volume discretisation with the Rhie Chow algorithm for pressure calculation. Simulation
Table 1 Slurries used in the raking studies Slurry % Density Composition no. solids (kg m 3) Vane Herschel yield Bulkley stress parameters (Pa) y n 0 1.2 4 3.2 16 0.7 28 0.56 48 0.6 95 10 0.27 0.25 0.5 0.6 0.6 0.6

meshes contain 1.2 to 1.7 million nodes except for the paddle blades which only needed 0.75 million. The CFX proprietary higher order upwind differencing scheme is used for the mass and momentum equations. User CEL expression language was used for programming the HerschelBulkley rheology model, the inflow conditions and certain aspects of the rotating flow. Other key aspects of the model are: 1. The simulation is performed in a rotating coordinate frame attached to the rake. In this frame, the geometry is stationary (although the tank walls and cone rotates), making the simulation simpler to undertake. 2. The bed material is assumed homogeneous (as in the pilot-scale experiments) and no dewatering is included in the model. 3. The HerschelBulkley rheology parameters measured during the pilot-scale experiments are used in the simulation. 4. The inflow is based on unreported CFD simulations of the exit flow from a full-scale thickener feedwell. It is set to be a smooth function of radius with a flow rate that is distributed in a hyperbolic fashion around the circumference. It also approximates the pilot-scale slurry feed system. Several Eulerian techniques for calculating residence time distributions were trialled, although the results were generally unsatisfactory due to numerical diffusion. A Lagrangian approached was then developed in which streamlines were calculated from the steady velocity field in a post-processing step. It is not possible to calculate streamlines by simply subtracting the rotation from the velocity field first (to move into a stationary coordinate frame) because in the stationary frame the rake (and hence computational geometry) is changing with time. To

1 2 3 4 5 6

11.9 18.2 30.6 34.4 37.8 41.4

1080 1122 1240 1272 1310 1345

Diluted UF 0 UF 7.5 UF + 12.4 wt.% 16 UF + 16.2 wt.% 33 UF + 19.6 wt.% 57 UF + 23.2 wt.% 132

UF refers to undiluted underflow from the tailings thickener that was used as the base slurry, and the percentage in the composition column is the wt.% of added attapulgite.

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Fig. 5. The arrangement of the pilot-scale thickener CFD model showing the rake layouts for (a) paddle blade, (b) 5-blade rake and (c) detail of the mesh for the 5-blade rake. The taller rake blades have the similar layout as the geometry in the middle.

perform the streamline calculations in the stationary frame would thus turn a steady problem into an unsteady one and would require vast amounts of unnecessary interpolation and additional error. Hence the following procedure was developed: 1. Velocity output files were read into the Tecplot 10 software and for each RTD, 125 streamlines were

calculated in the rotating coordinate frame (in which the geometry is steady). The streamline starting positions were uniformly distributed in a (5 5 5) cm3 box. 2. There is no timing information available from step 1, hence an integration program was written that integrated along a streamline from the start position, estimating the distance travelled and the mean speed between subsequent points on the streamline. This was then

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used to estimate a time increment between points on the streamline. 3. For each streamline, the time increment was added to the total elapsed time along that streamline, and the streamline position was rotated through an angle calculated as the product of the total elapsed time and the rotational speed of the coordinate frame. The resulting streamline is then the streamline as it would appear in the stationary frame (i.e. the one in which the rake is rotating). The raking geometries modelled are shown in Fig. 5a, b. The top of the bed is taken to be 0.6 m above the top edge of the cone, which is an average figure for the height in the pilot-scale studies (which varied between runs). This is well above the top of the rakes and any small discrepancies in the height will not affect the raking behaviour. Fig. 5c shows details of the unstructured surface mesh used around the inner portion of the rake. Mesh refinement studies are an important part of all CFD modelling. Due to the complexity of the geometries used here, a mesh refinement study of the complete pilotscale thickener geometry was not undertaken. Instead simulations were performed for the flow around individual rake blade/arm elements and an assessment made of the mesh resolution required to obtain converged results in terms of predicted forces on the blade/arm surfaces. Results showed that provided a blade contained approximately 12 40 elements, and that there was a concentration of elements at the edges of the blades, predicted lift and drag forces changed by less than 2% for increased resolution. This resolution was used or exceeded in the calculations undertaken here and special care was taken with mesh generation to provide high resolution around the raking structure without jeopardising the resolution in the bulk of the fluid. The meshes are consequently

considered to be fine enough to reliably model the flow pattern in the tank and to estimate rake torques. 4. Rake torque results During commissioning of the circuit, it was established that a minimum slurry height of 200 mm above the cone was required before slurry depth did not influence torque measurements (this corresponds to a slurry depth above the rakes at the tank periphery of approximately 100 mm). Consequently during the experiments, the depth of slurry in the thickener was kept in the range 0.40.9 m above the cone. For most of these runs the underflow rate was 3.0 m3 h 1 except for the highest yield stress slurry, where the underflow was reduced to 2.5 m3 h 1 due to pumping difficulties. For comparison, the volume swept by the two (75 mm high) inner rake blades of this system is equal to approximately 2 m3 h 1 at a rake speed of 1 rpm. Depending on how much of this volume is actually moved inward by the rake (as opposed to being swept circumferentially) the tank is probably over-raked at a rake speed of 2 rpm, and under-raked at a rake speed of 0.2 rpm, with the possibility of rat-holing in the latter case. In unreported experiments the underflow withdrawal rate was not seen to affect torque. 4.1. Measured torque Torque measurements showed evidence of random noise, cyclic behaviour related to the rake orientation, and drift with time, the latter showing some correlation with temperature even though the strain gauges are fully temperature compensated. Because of the random and cyclic variations the mean torque was averaged over multiple rotations, from 10 revolutions for the lowest speed

Fig. 6. Pilot-scale measurements of the effect of rake speed and slurry rheology on rake torque for the standard 30 blade rake (solid lines). Computational results discussed in Section 4.2 are shown as the dashed lines.

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Fig. 7. Rake torque as a function of vane yield stress for all slurry types tested, with the line of best fit.

(0.2 rpm) up to 170 revolutions for the highest speed (2 rpm). The mean drift over time was corrected by examining the drift in the single-revolution averages and subtracting the trend. Two key parameters of interest in this study are the effect of yield stress on rake torque and the effect of rake speed. Fig. 6 shows the effect of rake speed on torque for the 5-blade rake in the different slurries (experimental results are the solid lines). The largest increase in torque generally occurred when the speed was increased from 0.2 to 0.5 rpm (especially in Slurry No. 5 and 6), although this is not clear from the figure because of the log scale. At rake speeds greater than 0.5 rpm, torque increased only slightly with speed for all slurry rheologies. Anecdotal evidence from operating thickeners agrees with this lack of sensitivity of torque to rake speed, and indicates that the major component of rake torque is generated overcoming the slurry yield stress. This is most readily explained by referring to the rheograms shown in Fig. 4. As the rotation rate increases, the strain rate increases, and this changes the shear stress in line with changes in Fig. 4. When integrated out over the surfaces of the raking structure the yield stress con-

tributes strongly to the torque. Thus the torque versus rotation rate curves resemble the rheology curves, with larger increases at low rake speeds and smaller increases as the rake speed increases. Of course this behaviour depends strongly on the slurry properties and would not be seen in a Newtonian slurry. If all the rake torque values shown in Fig. 6 are plotted as a function of yield stress, an almost straight line results (Fig. 7). This figure shows that rake torque increases linearly with yield stress almost regardless of rake speed. This dependence suggests that yield stress measurements may be used to obtain a reasonable prediction of the likely torque for a thickener rake, provided a suitable relationship can be determined for the given configuration. The results also suggest that the measured rake torque can be used to back-calculate a direct estimate of the bed yield stress, again provided this linear relationship is known. As will be seen later, CFD offers a practical way of determining the relationship. In Frost et al. (1993) and utalo et al. (2003), taller rake blades were claimed to provide better rake efficiency, and torque measurements here for the 290 112 mm rake blades are compared to the 290 75 mm blades in Fig. 8 (for slurry #4, 33 Pa yield stress). Over the whole range of

Fig. 8. Effect of blade height on rake torque for a 5-blade rake in Slurry #4 (see Table 1 for material properties).

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Fig. 9. Comparison of straight paddle and 5-bladed rake for slurry #4 (33 Pa vane yield stress).

rotation rates the larger blade generated approximately 60% higher torque. The additional torque for tall blades is slightly more than the increase in blade size (50%), hence the additional efficiency of the tall blades comes at a disproportionate cost in required torque. One potential benefit with higher blades is that for a given rake speed, they deliver more material than smaller blades and will decrease the likelihood of rat-holing. Alternatively, taller blades could be used in a staggered blade arrangement in which alternate blades on opposite arms are removed, reducing the total blade area and torque while maintaining satisfactory rake delivery to the underflow. Although not trialled here, staggered blades were used to good effect in small-scale modelling presented in utalo et al. (2003). Fig. 9 shows the variation of torque with rake speed for a paddle blade compared to the standard 5-blade rake for slurry #4 (33 Pa yield stress). The projected area of the paddle blade is marginally greater (2%) than that of the standard 5-blade arm. The level of drift correction required for the paddle blade design are of the order of 15% or higher, and consequently the results for the paddle blade are not as reliable as the other rakes considered here that required only 25% corrections. For the paddle blade, the torque remains at an almost constant level that is approximately 1015% higher than for the 5-blade rake (possibly within experimental error in this case). However there is very little transport of material to the underflow with the paddle blade (see discussion in Section 5). The only benefit in practice of using a paddle blade (or keeping a scaled rake in operation) is a reduction in the likelihood of scale build-up on the thickener floor due to the repeated shearing of the sediment. The generally similar level of torque between the two raking systems suggests that projected area is also a key determinant in the level of rake torque (a conclusion also supported by the results shown in Fig. 8). Note that the variation in torque in Fig. 9 both between, and within, rake designs is within the scatter seen in Fig. 7.

4.2. Computed torque Rake torque can be estimated from the CFD simulations of the tank by numerically integrating the viscous and pressure forces on the surfaces of the rake blades and arms. The computed rake torques are compared to the experimentally measured values in Fig. 6 as a function of slurry rheology and rake speed for most of the slurries. The computed torques are represented as the dashed lines and are predicted to increase very slightly with rotation rate for all slurries, in good agreement with the pilot-scale experiments. Computed torque is consistently approximately 1020% higher than measured torque for the higher yield stress slurries, slurry #3 to slurry #6. This is not a large discrepancy and the difference between actual sediment rheology and the HB estimates could easily be the source of the difference. The computed torque for the

Fig. 10. Locations at which the solids tracer was added to the slurry bed.

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Fig. 11. Effect of rake speed on delivery of tracer material to the underflow for the 5-blade rake (290 75 mm blades) and slurry #4 (33 Pa vane yield stress) from (a) location 1 and (b) location 2.

thinnest slurry (slurry #1) is about 20% lower than the measured value at a rotation rate of 2 rpm but is only one third of the measured value at 0.2 rpm, suggesting that

frictional losses in the experiment may be playing a role here, although this discrepancy is not properly understood. Note that the absolute level of torque is very low in

Fig. 12. Flow visualisation in a model thickener showing the break-up of a single compact dye blob resulting from rake motion. The dye blob was released below the level of the rake arm at the 6 o'clock position in the image.

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Fig. 13. Tracer sequence illustrating movement of slurry for the 5-blade rake (290 75 mm blades) operating at 1 rpm. Experimental measurements (plus offset) top, and CFD simulation results bottom. Results are normalised by respective peak values of RTD for location 1.

the case of slurry #1, being significantly less than the scatter in the results for the higher viscosity slurries, and small errors in the rheology parameter fitting could also be the source of the discrepancy. Overall, the results seen in Fig. 6 suggest that the CFD model provides quite good torque estimates, and that the CFD approach may be extended to predicting torque on full-scale raking mechanisms with some confidence. One of the difficulties in practice is that the rheology of bed material is rarely well characterised, but as seen in Fig. 6 it is a key factor in determining torque. However, this situation is not necessarily as bad as it might seem because the rake could potentially be used as a rheometer to infer average rheology information, in particular yield stress, of the sediment bed under different process conditions. Determining a relationship such as that seen in Fig. 7 could be undertaken to a reasonable approximation using CFD. 5. Sediment residence time results Torque predictions are a crude means of validating the rake CFD model, and in the absence of transport patterns or velocity measurements (both of which are difficult to obtain in opaque fine particle slurries), a suitable validation can be performed by a comparison of calculated and measured residence time distributions (RTDs) for tracer released at different locations in the pilot thickener. For RTD measurements, slurry #4 (33 Pa) was used and the dyed tracer was made with a sub-sample of this material as described in Section 2.4. Four separate experiments were run with tracer addition at the different locations as shown in Fig. 10. Locations 1 and 2 were a distance approximately 90 mm above the floor of the tank and were inside the volume of material swept directly by the rake. Locations 3 and 4 were approximately 225 mm above the edge of the floor cone and outside the swept

volume. The radial positions of locations 1 and 4 were 1/ 3R and of locations 2 and 3 were 2/3R. Once the solids tracer had been added at a specified location in the sediment bed, underflow pumping and rake rotation were started simultaneously and data measurement using the reflectance spectrometer was commenced, with measurements made every 2 s. 5.1. Effect of rake speed on solids residence time Fig. 11a, b shows the appearance of tracer pulses released at locations 1 and 2 respectively for three different rake speeds with the 5-blade rake (recall the underflow rate is 3 m3 h 1). As the rake speed is increased the dyed material released in the raked zone appears sooner in the underflow, indicating that the rakes are moving the material more rapidly at higher speeds as expected. The tracer released at location 1 appears in a single pulse for the three rake speeds indicating that it has either remained as a coherent entity, or the part that did not remain coherent has not appeared at the underflow or has
Table 2 Comparison between measured and predicted mean residence times (in seconds) for material released at different locations and different raking geometries Location Location Location Location 1 2 3 4 Standard 5-blade (1 rpm) Tall 5-blade (0.67 rpm) Paddle blade (1 rpm) Measurement 80 CFD 62 Measurement 180 CFD 76 Measurement N/D CFD 86 180 205 230 218 N/D 1341 N/D 652 600 626 N/D 1119 1850 1506 1650 1319 N/D 371

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Fig. 14. Tracer sequence for the 5-blade rake (290 112 mm blades) rotating at 0.67 rpm. Response (+1.5) from experiment (top) and from simulation (bottom). Responses normalised by the magnitude of the respective peak values for location 1.

been diluted below the level at which detection is possible. The peak residence time for 1 rpm is not twice that of 2 rpm (and the 0.2 rpm peak is not 5 times that of 1 rpm) because underflow pumping also affects residence time. Thus the rake is not the only factor that determines transport and residence time, and the basic flow in the tank interacts with the flow induced by the rake to produce the tracer RTDs. There is a distinctly different feature in the tracer curves for the dye released at location 2, where the tracer appears in the underflow as multiple peaks. This can be explained by results shown in utalo et al. (2003) in which a single dye blob at the periphery of the tank in a model thickener is stretched and divided by the rake action (see Fig. 12 for an example). 5.2. Effect of tracer release location Residence time distributions for dye released at locations 1, 2 and 4 for the 5-blade rake with 75 mm high blades operating at 1 rpm are shown in Fig. 13 (top is experimental measurement, bottom is CFD prediction). Unfortunately, problems with data corruption meant that the RTD measurement for location 3 were lost for this set of experiments. Also note that only 20% of the computed streamlines reached the exit in the CFD simulations for location 4, further limiting the comparison. The CFD simulation results for RTDs are in good agreement for tracer released at locations 1 and 2, and in reasonable agreement for location 4 (Average residence times for the 4 release positions from experiment and CFD are listed in Table 2.). Fig. 13 shows that tracer released at location 1 exits before that released at location 2, and tracer from location 4 takes a very much longer time to reach the underflow than tracer released in the raking zone. Once material is in the raking zone under these operating conditions it usually moves fairly rapidly to the underflow. When it does reach the underflow, if it has travelled

more than a small distance, it appears as multiple peaks with a frequency approximately equal to the rake rotation frequency, indicating the importance of rake passage on transport. The residence time distribution is very broad indicating that there has been a significant degree of stretching and possibly break-up of the original tracer volume (as seen in Fig. 12). To more clearly show the complexity in the interaction between raking and underflow, results from a 5-blade rake with taller blades (290 112 mm) are next considered. The rake speed in this case was 0.67 rpm which gave an identical swept volume to the previous case and hence the flow patterns might be expected to be very similar. The residence time traces are shown in Fig. 14 (top). Tracer from locations 1 and 2 is predicted to appear later for the tall blades than for the shorter blades and tracer from locations 3 and 4 it is predicted to appear sooner. These differences in timing in the CFD analyses are small and no doubt depend on details of the rake geometry. The differences in the measured durations probably depend on the exact azimuthal and vertical location at which the tracer was released. The experimental results for locations 3 and 4 for this case are known to be reliable because replicate runs produced almost identical tracer responses. Most interesting in Fig. 14 is that the sequence of tracer detection (from first to last appearance) is locations 1, 2, 3 and finally 4. Location 4 is much closer to the outlet than locations 2 and 3 but material released there exits last. A discussion of the reasons for this is given in Section 5.3. The CFD RTD predictions for this case are shown in Fig. 14 (bottom), where there is extremely good agreement for RTDs for locations 2 and 3, and reasonable agreement for location 4. CFD predictions for location 1 are significantly less than the measured value and are closer to the standard blade result [see Table 2 and Fig. 13 (top)]. In the absence of replicate

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Fig. 16. Streamlines for material released at locations 14 for standard 5-blade rake at 1 rpm (a, b) and tall blade rake at 0.67 rpm (c, d). Plan view is shown in the left column (a, c) and side view in the right column (b,d). The arrow shows the direction of rake motion and the numbers indicate the start positions of the streamlines.

rake arm in the outer part of the tank transports tracer from locations 3 and 4 outwards a significant part of the distance to the periphery of the tank before moving it downwards into the raked region and eventually to the underflow, thus explaining the long residence time.

Fig. 15. (a) Velocity vectors and contours of radial velocity on a plane through the centre of the rake arm. Red represents outward velocity and blue inward velocity. (b) Velocity vectors and contours of azimuthal velocity on the same plane. Red represents flow in the opposite direction to the rake and blue in the same direction as the rake. This data is plotted in the stationary coordinate frame.

results for location 1, it is believed that the experimental results are in error in this case. 5.3. Explanation for RTD behaviour The reasons for the sequence of tracer exit behaviour can be explained by considering the velocity field obtained from a CFD simulation of the pilot-scale experiment (for tall blade rake, 0.67 rpm, slurry #4), as shown in Fig. 15a. The red contours represent flow that is moving radially outwards and blue contours flow that is moving radially inwards. The generally inward flow of material at the level of the rake blades transports much of the tracer placed at locations 1 and 2 to the underflow fairly rapidly. The outward flow of material above the

Fig. 17. Streamlines for material released at locations 14 for tall 5blade rake at 0.2 rpm (a, b) and 2 rpm (c, d). Compare to results for 0.67 rpm in Fig. 16c, d. Top view is shown in the left column (a, c) and side view in the right column (b, d). The arrow shows the direction of rake motion.

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Table 3 Computed mean residence times in seconds for material released at different locations in the tall blade rake at different rake speeds Location 1 0.2 rpm 0.67 rpm 2 rpm 55 76 31 Location 2 419 218 141 Location 3 901 626 219 Location 4 145 1319 449

Fig. 15b shows contours of swirl velocity, with blue contours representing flow that is moving with the rake (out of the page) and red contours representing flow that is in the opposite direction to rake motion (into the page). The rake blades push material in front of them (and suck material behind them), but the induced flow above the rake arm has a net motion in the opposite direction to the rake. This general behaviour is even more noticeable with the paddle blade and a discussion is left to Section 5.4. Streamlines for material released at the 4 different locations are shown in Fig. 16 for the standard 5-blade

rake (Fig. 16a, b) and the tall 5-blade rake (Fig. 16c, d). The effect of the reverse motion is seen for both geometries in the right-hand images (b, d). For both 5-blade geometries, material released at locations 3 and 4 swirls backwards as it moves outwards above the rake arm toward the periphery of the tank before being moved downwards into the raked zone. (Note that in the case of the taller blades, the dye released at location 4 makes this inward and outward traverse twice because excessive raking ejects it the first time from the raked zone). Once the streamlines originating at locations 3 and 4 reach a level below the rake arm, they travel to the underflow in a spiral pattern with the same sense as the rake rotation (and similar to that seen in Fig. 12). The volume swept by the inner two rake blades is approximately 2/3 of the total underflow in both 5-blade cases shown in Fig. 16. Even if these blades moved 100% of the swept volume inwards (which unreported work suggests they do not), any tracer released much closer to

Fig. 18. Predicted residence time distributions for the paddle blade rake at 1 rpm.

Fig. 19. Streamlines for material released at locations 14 for the paddle rake at 1 rpm. (a) Top view and (b) side view (right). The arrow shows the direction of paddle motion.

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the rake shaft than location 4 would probably have moved more directly to the underflow, although neither this experiment or simulation was performed for this case. The outward motion seen in Fig. 15 is the result of excessive raking in the outer parts of the tank resulting from uniform rake blade size (common to conventional thickeners) as discussed by Warden (1981). This overraked material cannot flow inwards because the next inner blade is moving still less material, hence the only place for this material to go is upwards and back outwards. This mechanism also contributes to segmentation of the dye streak seen in Fig. 12. These results raise some interesting points. They clearly show that the flow in a thickener bed when raked with uniform blades is very far from plug flow, and that significant parts of the outer region of the bed is moved away from the underflow and also mixed as a consequence of the over-raking. Because the blades there in most cases will contribute significantly to the rake torque, the presence of over-raking suggests that a reduction in blade size may reduce total rake torque (which depends on total projected rake area) but will have no adverse effect on solids transport. The complexity of the flow patterns and interaction between rake speed, delivery and underflow rate is highlighted in Fig. 17 that shows tracer lines for the tall blade rake at 0.2 and 2 rpm respectively. Mean residence times for the three different rake speeds in this case are presented in Table 3, where the exit sequence for 0.2 rpm is locations 1, 4, 2 and 3 and for 2 rpm is locations 1, 2, 3 and 4 (the same sequence as 0.67 rpm). The pilot-scale experiment at 0.67 rpm potentially delivered too much material to the underflow (this is the reason that none of the tracer from location 4 appeared at the underflow before location 3). When applied to a fullscale thickener, the outermost blades can be radially transporting 2050 times as much bed material as the innermost blades and the excess bed material will be convected up and transported back out many times before reaching the underflow. The issue of what constitutes appropriate rake delivery at the underflow is one that needs further investigation. 5.4. Paddle blade rake The predicted RTDs for the paddle blade are shown in Fig. 18, where a very different order of exit is found. Again, dye released at location 1 is the first to exit, but the order thereafter is locations 4, 3 and finally 2. Because the paddle blade does not push material toward the underflow, dye at location 4 is sucked into the underflow with little influence from the paddle blade at all. Dye at location 2

slowly moves inwards due to underflow suction while being pushed in front of the paddle. As in the case of the 5blade rake, flow above the rake arm (location 3) moves counter to the rake direction although it also moves slowly inwards (see streamlines in Fig. 19). This reverse flow is counter-intuitive, and deserves a brief discussion. Because the material in the bed has a yield stress in these simulations, it will not slip at the tank walls or cone unless the total stress on the rakes is greater than the total stress on walls and cone. As the rake moves forward, bed material is moved in front of it, but because there must be conservation of mass (and because the entire bed is constrained to be stationary away from the rake), there must be reverse flow. The situation is similar to that of a particle falling in a container of fluid there must be a net upward fluid flow to balance the net downward flow of solids. The presence of reverse flow was also noticed on the surface of the pilot-scale tank during raking experiments. In the case of the paddle blade, the flow patterns seen in Fig. 19 show that the rake does not enhance transport to the underflow and the torque results shown in Fig. 9 show that rake torque is higher than for a conventional rake. Hence, operation of such a system (or continuing to use a rake that has been scaled-up by solids) is likely to be ineffective as well as requiring more power than a clean system. 6. Discussion and conclusion The difficulty in conducting pilot-scale experiments on an operating site (and the large volumes of materials needed to conduct them off site) limited the experimental data that could be obtained in this study to that presented above. Although the data is not comprehensive, when considered in conjunction with CFD simulation results, a number of features of rake operation and sediment transport in thickener beds have been elucidated. It is perhaps unsurprising that the two main factors that determine rake torque are the projected area of the rake in the direction of travel and the yield stress of the material through which it is moving. The pilot-scale results show that for a given rake geometry, the rake torque follows an almost linear trend with bed yield stress and is a weak function of rake speed. This dependence suggests that yield stress measurements of thickener bed material may be used to obtain a reasonable prediction of the likely torque provided a suitable relationship can be determined for a given rake configuration. Alternatively, if the yield stress measurement cannot be reliably undertaken, an estimate of yield stress can be obtained from the measured rake torque provided the linear relationship is known. The

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CFD model was seen to give good torque estimates, and CFD modelling of the rake moving through different yield stress materials should provide sufficiently reliable information to determine the relationship between torque and yield stress for any given rake geometry. The key result from the residence time measurements and predictions is that flow in a thickener bed when raked by a rake with uniform blades is very far from plug flow. The outer part of the tank is significantly over-raked in most cases and material here is needlessly recycled as a consequence of this. Because the outer rake blades in most cases will contribute significantly to rake torque, a reduction in blade size (or even removal of some blades) should have no adverse affect on sediment transport and should provide an opportunity to reduce overall rake torque. The results also show the importance of attaining some balance between rake delivery and underflow withdrawal. Too much rake delivery will result in needless recirculation and anecdotal evidence suggests that insufficient raking will increase the likelihood of rat-holing. Exactly where this balance lies cannot be determined from the results here and requires further study. Acknowledgments A significant part of this work was conducted as part of the AMIRA P266D Improving Thickener Technology

project. The authors wish to thank the following companies for their support: Albian Sands Energy, Alcoa World Alumina, Anglo Gold, Anglo Platinum, BHP Billiton, Cable Sands, Ciba Specialty Chemicals, Cytec Australia Holdings, De Beers Consolidated Mines, EIMCO Process Equipment, GL&V/Dorr Oliver, Glencore AG, Iluka Resources, Kumba Resources, Metso Minerals, Mt Isa Mines, Nabalco, ONDEO Nalco, Pasminco, Pechiney Aluminium, Queensland Alumina, Queensland Nickel, Rio Tinto, Tiwest, True North Energy, WMC Resources, Worsley Alumina. References
Albertson, O.E., Okey, R.W., 1992. Evaluating scraper designs. Water Environ. Technol. 4, 5258. Frost, R.C., Halliday, J., Dee, A.S., 1993. Continuous consolidation of sludge in large scale gravity thickeners. Water Sci. Technol. 28, 7786. Gnthert, F.W., 1984. Thickening zone and sludge removal in circular final settling tanks. Water Sci. Technol. 16, 303316. Kubelka, P., Munk, F., 1931. Zeit. Fur Tetn. Physik 12, 593 (1931). utalo, I.D., Paterson, D.A., Rudman, M., 2003. Flow visualisation and computational prediction in thickener rake models. Miner. Eng. 16, 93102. Szalai, L., Krebs, P., Rodi, W., 1994. Simulation of flow in circular clarifiers with and without swirl. J. Hydraul. Eng. 120, 421. Warden, J.H., 1981. The design of rakes for continuous thickeners especially for waterworks coagulant sludges. Filtr. Sep 18, 113116.