Effects of Strong Adsorption Pre-dehydration on Dehydration Energy Consumption of Montmorillonite Organic Gel

This is an article in the field of ceramics and composites. Montmorillonite organic gel is a thixotropic gel, which is usually produced by wet process. It needs to be spray drying to obtain gel products. However, the drying cost accounts for the major part of the production cost due to the low efficiency and high energy consumption of spray drying. Therefore, it is of great importance to reduce the energy consumption in the process of dehydration. A new type of pre dehydration process with low energy consumption is proposed in this paper. A non-metallic mineral material with high specific surface area and good water absorption is filled into the dehydrated tank. The montmorillonite organic gel is injected into the dehydrated tank and stirred well to achieve the purpose of pre dehydration. The high-quality organic gel product is then obtained by spray drying. The special process for the pre-dewatering process is designed and the energy consumption of the pre-drying process and the spray drying process without pre dehydration are compared by thermal calculation. The results show that the pre dehydration process can save about 58% energy compared with the existing process.