Patent 7591946 was granted and assigned to Outotec on September, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The invention provides an extraction device (1) for liquid suspensions and pulps and is designed for use in the field of mineral processing. The extraction device includes two adjacent upstream and downstream concentric chambers (2) and (3) defining a feedwell (4). The feedwell is centrally located upstream of a third chamber in the form of a thickening tank (5). All three chambers are in sequential unidirectional fluid flow relationship such that feed liquid flows firstly from chamber (2) to chamber (3) and then to the tank (5).