alfa lavals were commonly used on the boats, where water contamination was potentially a problem, I spent a couple of evening talking to one of their factory techs cos the technology was interesting, we have some very interesting technical conversations and I can't remember all the details exactly, but three things stood out.
1/ they separate substances of different specific gravity
2/ they don't work well on different viscosity
3/ they don't work on solutes or micro particle suspensions.
in other words it is s completely different technology from filtering or even reverse osmosis filtering, what is it is a low G force lab centrifuge, the "clever" bit being no spin up and reload, it works on a constant feed.
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any of you guys tried waxing out distillation by cooling instead of heating? breweries use it now cos its more efficient.