Separate Liquids From Solids With Screw Presses
Screw Presses are designed to squeeze liquid out of organic material. The modern screw press has a screw (pressing mechanism) surrounded by cylinder walls that have a screened surface. Organic materials are squeezed by screw presses by forcing them against the screened surface or other filter media. Instead of a piston like earlier models possessed, the modern screw press coveys material towards discharge by using a helicoid screw.
A Screw Press’ primary function for the majority of applications is to separate solids from liquids, but there is another kind of screw press that isn’t used for that function. There are a three primary categories of screw presses. The first category is a screw press with no opening in the barrels that surround the screw, which means there is no mechanism separating liquids from solids. A plastic molding machine is a good example of this kind of screw press, where the heated screw melts plastic pellets and discharges the molded plastic into an injection molding die.
The second category of screw presses remove water from fibrous material. These screw presses are known as expellers. Expellers apply intensely high pressure to squeeze the fat in oil seeds, such as sunflower seeds, peanuts, soybeans, canola and others. The intense pressure from the expeller turns the fat from the seeds into liquid oil that flows through the screen or filter media that surrounds the screw. The third category of screw presses remove free liquid from material. Screw presses that remove free liquid cover a wide range of applications, including in the pulp and paper industry to separate water from cellulose fiber and in the food industry to squeeze an alcohol solution from foods such as pectin, soybean protein, and xanthan gum. Other primary applications include separating water from waste streams at food processing factories, spent brewer’s grain from breweries and orange peel from orange juice production facilities.
Anderson Process is proud to partner with top of the line screw press manufacturers, such as Vincent Corporation to provide the highest quality screw presses in the industry. Vincent Corporation offers several screw press models, including small 4″ laboratory models on up to giant 50 ton machines with screws that are 40″ in diameter.
