As the world’s first filter machine, filter press has a simple structure, is safe to operate with less auxiliary equipment. and its filter cake is relatively dry, making it suitable for materials difficult to filter with high viscosity, small granularity and big slag amount. As a result, it is widely used, and the improvement and development of the machine type are fairly quick.
The filter press product starts from manual pressing, pull plate, wood, cast iron and aluminum plate and frame to oil pressure compressing device and aluminum alloy. Especially, the Kurita Machinery MFG. Co., Ltd.
in Japan developed the world’s first fully automatic filter press in 1958 (obtained patents in Japan, U.S.A, U.K., Germany and France), which was put into production in Osaka, Japan early that year. In 1963, the RF type fully automatic filter press of Kurita was applied as a converter dust collecting and dehydration machine in the field of environmental pollution treatment and resource recovery. In 1971, the MF type fully automatic filter press was developed by Kurita through adding a natural rubber membrane in the filter chamber of the previous product and setting up a squeezing mechanism, making the dehydration rate of filter cake significantly improved. In 1976, the chamber fully automatic filter press (JMF2000×2000×80 chamber) with a filter cloth cleaning device and a squeezing device was trial-produced, the largest filtration area reaching 560m2. In 1977, the UF type fully automatic filter press with a single traveling filter cloth was developed. Different types of filter press are applied in sludge treatment in the field of refinery heavy oil dewaxing, lubricant fine filtration, water purification field, sewer processing plant, industrial wastewater and coal preparation wastewater treatment of coal mine respectively. As the equipment for environmental pollution control, the demand for filter press is ever increasing. Currently, most of the automatic filter press produced and used in domestic and overseas are the 3 types mentioned above, i.e. filter cloth fixed automatic recessed filter press, filter cloth fixed squeezing automatic recessed filter press and single traveling filter cloth automatic recessed filter press.
While the horizontal fully automatic recessed filter press was developed in the 1950s, the ФЛAK vertical automatic filter press was firstly developed by Chemical-Mechanical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The ФЛAKM type squeezing vertical automatic filter press was produced in the 1960s. Later, Finland bought the patent technology and made some improvements on the basis of the ФЛAKM type; Produced the LAROX PF type squeezing vertical automatic filter press, which was applied in dressing plants. And the product naturally made a hit with remarkable economic effects.
In foreign countries, such as Japan, Germany, Russia, Finland, U.S.A, Spain, automatic filter press has been put into serial production, with various specifications covering from the 0.1m2 test device to 1,727m2 large model.
The research and development of automatic filter press in China started from the 1960s. In order to solve the filtration of nickel ore concentrate and electrolytic manganese, the first 3.3m2 domestic vertical automatic filter press (See in Fig.8-35) was designed by China Nonferrous Engineering and Research Institute, Central Iron & Steel Research Institute and BGRIMM Technology Group, trial-produced by Shanghai Chemical Machinery Plant Co., Ltd. and was used for test filtration of the said materials and rare earth concentrate in Shanghai No.2 Smelting Plant in 1970, achieving good effects. Since 1970s, XMZ60-1000/30 type recessed automatic filter press has been produced in China.
In 1982, China Nonferrous Engineering and Research Institute first developed the XAZ40-810/30 type polypropylene recessed automatic filter press and polypropylene membrane recessed filter press later. Since the late 1980s, China has witnessed the rapid development of automatic filter press, trial-produced and produced some novel and common automatic filter presses, with a filtration area ranging from 20m2 to 1,300m2. Most of the modern filter press is recessed type. At present, the recessed and plate and frame type filter press are the most widely applied models, as well as the highest in output. At present, it is the filter press manufacturers that have the highest output value in the separation machinery industry.
Since automatic recessed filter press is suitable for materials difficult to filter with high viscosity, small granularity and big slag amount, it is widely used in the industrial production of metallurgical, chemical, coal, petroleum, medical, dyes and ceramic, and wastewater treatment of environmental protection administration.
