A novel repulsive-mode high gradient magnetic separator. Part I. Design and experimental results

We present a novel design for a continuously operating wet high-gradient repulsive mode magnetic separator (RMMS). The separator utilizes strong repulsive magnetic forces generated by a two-wire system placed into a permanent magnet's background magnetic field and a separation channel with one inlet and three outlet streams. In contrast to earlier RMMS designs, our separator takes into consideration the repulsive and attractive forces on the particles, which have a major effect in the beginning and the end of the particles' trajectories, respectively. Moreover, the design presented here permits an easy way to scale up the separator by a matrix arrangement of both wires and separation channels. We examine the influence of system parameters on the separation efficiency experimentally, using synthetic magnetite microparticles in water as a model system.