separater

Separater, commonly written as separator, is a general term for any device, mechanism, or boundary that divides a mixture, signal, or stream into distinct components. In engineering and industry, separaters exploit differences in properties such as density, phase, magnetism, or particle size to achieve separation. Common examples include oil–water separaters, which remove water from crude oil; cyclone and gravity separators, which use fluid dynamics to separate solids from liquids; centrifuges, which apply centrifugal force; magnetic separators, which extract ferrous materials; and sieve or screen separators, which classify solids by size.

In chemical processing, separation techniques such as distillation, filtration, adsorption, and chromatography perform analogous roles, often using dedicated separator equipment to achieve desired purity or routing of streams.

In data and computing, separators act as delimiters that mark boundaries between fields or tokens. Examples include comma or tab separators in text or CSV files, and directory or path separators in file systems and URLs. In programming, string or token separators help define lexical units.

In typography and writing, separators are punctuation marks used to divide elements within a sentence or list, including commas, semicolons, and dashes.

Design considerations for separaters include throughput, efficiency, selectivity, resistance to wear, maintenance needs, and compatibility with the materials handled. The term is broad and its precise meaning depends on context, ranging from mechanical devices in a plant to delimiters in a data stream. See also separator and related terminology in specific industries for detailed definitions.