Screens are more commonly used everyday to allow air to flow in and out of a space or home and keep flying insects and bugs out. However, industrial sifting screens do more than allow air flow. These screens contribute to many of the different duties that industrial factories perform. Here are four uses you may not have known about.

Sifting Rock, Minerals and Precious Stones

Mining companies and quarries use industrial sifting screens to shake common dirt and soil from larger rock, valuable minerals and precious stones. These screens are attached to the end of a gyrating sifter, which shakes all of the mined rock around to shake off dirt and break off smaller bits. Then the dirt and smaller bits are filtered through the screen, leaving the larger rock, minerals and precious stones behind.

Pulp and Paper Manufacturing

Sifting screens are used in this industry to compress water out of pulp to create paper. The paper is pressed onto the screens where weight and heat are applied to squish out water and papermaking chemicals. After the paper is flattened and dried, it is pulled from the screens and the process is repeated.

Filtering Human Waste

Water treatment facilities use industrial sifting screens to filter human waste. Urine passes through and heads into a separate holding tank, away from solid and semi-solid waste. The screens also help filter out anything that is not supposed to be flushed down a toilet, like condoms and feminine hygiene products. The screens prevent these products from ending up in the cleaned and processed water supply, where they might otherwise break down and potentially cause severe health problems for many people in the city.

Pharmaceutical Separators

Sometimes accidental mixtures of pharmaceutical products occurs. To remove the products and clean the containers, the containers are placed in a pharmaceutical separator. The separator filters out the mixed products, washes and rinses the containers and then dries the containers aseptically. Without the sifting screens in these devices, it would be very difficult to extract some of the pharmaceutical products that these machines typically manage.

Food Processing

Numerous food processing, canning and preserving plants utilize industrial screens to sift out good food from bad, stems and leaves from fruit and vegetables, and create fruit sauces and compotes via a compression process (similar to making paper). The screens are also an effective way to drain dirty and contaminated water away from washed fruits and vegetables. As the dirty/contaminated water moves over the food and through the screens, it drips down into a channel underneath where the dirty/contaminated water is moved out of the plant and disposed of.