eraldustööd

Eraldustööd, a term used in Estonian technical literature, translates roughly to separation work. It encompasses industrial processes that separate components from a mixture to produce purified streams, concentrates, or waste products. The concept is applied across mining, chemical processing, recycling, and environmental remediation, and relies on exploiting differences in physical properties such as density, magnetism, particle size, solubility, or chemical affinity.

Common methods fall into mechanical, physical-chemical, and chemical categories. Mechanical separation includes screening, washing, jigging, gravity and density-based separation, and flotation. Physical-chemical methods use filtration, centrifugation, sedimentation, crystallization, or membrane techniques. Chemical separation relies on reactions that selectively remove one component, such as solvent extraction, precipitation, ion exchange, or selective complexation. Method choice depends on feed characteristics and economic constraints.

Applications include ore and mineral processing, coal preparation, and metal ore refining; recycling of metals, plastics, and electronic waste; water and soil treatment; and pharmaceutical or food processing where purification steps are required. In practice, eraldustööd are integrated into process flows with milling, grinding, and subsequent handling to ensure material quality and process efficiency.

Typical equipment used in eraldustööd includes screens and classifiers, hydrocyclones, jigs and dense-media separators, magnetic and electrostatic separators, flotation cells, filters, and centrifuges. Control systems monitor particle size distribution, flow rates, and separation efficiency, while safety measures address dust, fumes, and exposure to hazardous substances.

Environmental and occupational safety regulations govern emissions, waste handling, and worker protection. The term reflects a broad set of techniques, from traditional gravity-based methods to modern chemistries, and its application continues to evolve with advances in materials science and process engineering.